The good man, with his fearful fluency, declares that he is going to bring forward much of the lighter kind--meaning what we call the dilettante class of music. The numbers appeared week by week, and the continuation was always postponed for the next, often at the most thrilling passages--in the approved style of the clever magazine. The authors’ names are only given when they are very well known. Among these distinguished men are many whose names have not remained in the memory of history--fashionable composers, such as every epoch has in plenty. But there are also Philip Emanuel Bach, Kirnberger, and many others of the great Bach School. Most of it is clavier-music. Operatic airs, which occasionally appear, are so arranged that the voice part, under which the words are printed, is played by the right hand, and the completing orchestral notes are written small in the upper staves. There are also popular songs in abundance. A French spirit breathes through these pages; a fashionable spirit of enjoyment. The short character-pieces, which the French loved so dearly to introduce with significant titles, are mingled plentifully with sonatas and rondos, arranged in the Italian manner. Under the character-pieces, in the appropriate places, as in the biblical stories of Kuhnau, the explanatory programme-text is printed. Thus in a piece called “La Spinoza,”[98] the developments are marked as being philosophic reflections on a certain theme. Two pieces, called “Wonderment” and “Youthful Joy,” easily explain themselves. In one piece entitled, “Two friends grumbling over their wine,” by the arrangement and form of the two voices, in right and left hands, is represented how they converse, console each other, gain courage, and wait for a friendly glance of fortune. The most humorous is a short clavier-piece, “A Compliment,” which, usually in two voices, exhibits the following spirited contents: “If you are well, I am charmed.” “Rather I am glad that I see you so well” (Repeated). “I have heard that you have been poorly: I am sorry to hear it.” “Heaven be praised I am recovered.” “But I am ashamed”--“allow me”----They quarrel who shall bring the chair, and finally sit down. “I recommend myself”--“and _I_ recommend _myself_”--“to your friendship.” It was precisely at this period, when the clavier first became truly popular, that its construction was rapidly and constantly improved. It was then that the separation of the two systems of mechanism--the so-called English, and the Viennese--took place. The names mean nothing, for both systems alike arose in Germany proper. The distinction lies in the fact that in the English the hammer rests on a separate bracket from which the key strikes it, while in the Viennese the hammer rests directly, though loose, on the end of the key-lever.[99]