the approach of maturer years but heightened and strengthened its character. He spoke of German music, and told me I should hear it best performed in Vienna and Berlin. Some remarks on America led him to speak of a grand Musical Festival, which was then in the course of preparation in New York. He had received a letter inviting him to assist in it, and said he would have gladly attended it, but his duty to his family would not permit of his leaving. He appeared to be much gratified by the invitation, not only for the personal appreciation which it implied, but as a cheering sign of progress in the musical art. My friend W——, who had met with Mendelssohn the summer previous, at the baths of Kronthal, said that he had expressed much curiosity respecting the native negro melodies—which, after all, form the only peculiarly national music we possess—and that he considered some of them exceedingly beautiful and original. I did not feel at liberty to intrude long upon the _morning hours_ of a composer, and took my leave after a short interview. Mendelssohn, at parting, expressed his warm interest in our country’s progress, especially in the refined arts, and gave me a kind invitation to call upon him in whatever German city I should find him. I left Frankfort in two or three weeks after this, and although I was never afterward enabled to fulfill my promise and desire, I was often forcibly reminded of his person and his genius—and never more gratefully than when I stood beside the marble monument to Sebastian Bach, in the promenades of Leipzic—raised to the memory of that patriarch of harmony, by the generosity of Mendelssohn. * * * * * JASPER LEECH. THE MAN WHO NEVER HAD ENOUGH. The hero of my sketch, Jasper Leech, was, to use the stereotyped expression, born of poor but honest parents; his infancy exhibited no remarkable diagnostics, by which to illustrate or establish any peculiarity of character, saving, perhaps, the simple fact, that with him the process of weaning was protracted to a curious extent, any attempt to cut off or diminish the maternal supply being met with obstinate resistance, in spite of all the ingenious artifices usually resorted to on such occasions to induce a distaste, still he sucked and sucked, until the female visiters, one and all, noted it; shameful in a great fellow like that.