With respect to Chopin, the same author also quotes the following passage from Alfred de Mussetʼs “Confessions dʼun enfant du siecle,” which characterizes, with such wonderful poetic feeling and psychological keenness, the prevailing malady of the age: “When the war was over, the Emperor an exile, and portraits of Wellington and Blücher, with the inscription ‘Salvatoribus mundi,’ adorned every wall, a new generation was beholding, with gloomy thought, the ruins of the past. In the veins of these youths flowed the same warm blood which had flooded the whole world. Everyone raved about the snows of Moscow, and the sands of Egypt, every soul was full of dreams, swelling with lofty thoughts and panting with desires which were impossible, for wherever men turned their eyes all was emptiness and desolation. The more mature believed in nothing, the learned lived in an eternal contradiction, poets preached despair. An awful hopelessness raged like a pest in the civilised world.” If, according to Alfred de Musset, political and literary circumstances had exercised so baneful an effect on the younger generation in France, how much more excuse was there for such a state of things in Poland, where hope had turned into scepticism, and melancholy become a chronic evil. The sensitive and pliant Sarmatian temperament is as susceptible to hope as to despair, but the miserable political condition of the country for generations could not but foster an inclination to melancholy. The more finely strung natures, who perhaps, maintain with difficulty the necessary equilibrium for ordinary affairs, are, of course most sensitive to such influences. Considering the political circumstances of Poland, we can only wonder that misery and despair did not lead the nation to further extremes. Among those whose productions expressed their love for their country, and profound sorrow for its shameful debasement, Chopin, for tenderness and refinement, stands pre-eminent. His handsome aristocratic appearance, and that enthusiasm of nature, which was transfused into his music, distinguished him above his compeers. The fatal events which, at the beginning of the decade of 1830, brought Poland to the verge of ruin, could not but influence the works of every native artist. Libelt, one of the chief poets of that time, sung from the very depth of his soul: “Die traute Heimathe bietet uns kein Gluck, Erliegt dem Vaterland das Misgeschick.” How could Chopin sing a cheerful song out of a merry heart? He would have had to assume a cheerfulness he could not feel, which to his intensely natural character would have been extremely difficult. Like every great man, he was greatest when left to the inspirations of his genius. The fire and spirit of youth, indeed, glowed in his soul, and sweet melodies flowed from his pen, but through his smile the hot tear always glistened—a tribute to his country and to his brethren fallen in her defence.