He wrote many drawing-room pieces, which bore the usual significant titles--Charmes de Paris, La Tenerezza, Jadis et aujourd’hui, la Petite Babillarde. Similar titles he superscribed to his Études, such as his three Allegri di Bravura and his characteristic Studies (Op. 95). Among the former are La Forza and Il Capriccio; among the latter are Juno, Terpsichore, Moonlight at Sea, Dream, and Anguish. In these the seeker after mode will be disappointed. They are pieces worthy of Schumann in power of form; half exercises, half characteristic pieces, reaching that height of technique where air and étude unite in the closest bonds. The work which Cramer began has reached the height of artistic achievement. For here, where meet knowledge, technical sense of form, and poetic conception, the peculiar musical vein of the age is found. The fugal “Widerspruch” [contradiction] is an artistic construction that stands alone; “Anguish” is a penetrating tuneful picture, which once more reminds us of Wagner; it is a foretaste of Siegmund’s flight or of the Valkyrie Prologue. The untitled Études Op. 70, which rank as his best work, stand out as the forerunners of the Studies Op. 95. There is the same delicate characteristic sense; they are a gallery of tone pictures, among which the twelfth Étude in B flat minor is never to be forgotten. It is a Night-Piece in the style of Schumann. But all is calculated for human fingers, not for those of Liszt, like Op. 95. And here we feel patiently after the essential nature of the musical Étude. We observe the inner relation between mechanical and spiritual motion. Expression and difficulty grow alongside; the straining of the fingers is involuntarily the straining of the soul; their smooth gliding is the gliding of emotion, and the stress of mind is loosened in the muscles of the fingers as they move over the keys. It is thus that the irreconcilable at last meet. [Illustration: Parisian and London Pianists at the beginning of the 19th century. L. Adam. Kalkbrenner. Cramer.] [121] Weber conducted the Philharmonic in 1826, in which year he died. [122] This sort of thing is by no means without example in our own time. The difficulty is very commonly solved in English towns even of the size of Frankfort, by having pianos sent from London. [123] But the best bred evening party still (in London at least) shouts at the top of its voice when it “hears a master play.” See “Punch,” and Du Maurier, _passim_. A striking illustration of the vulgarity of modern manners. [124] The author means “Pearls of the Ocean,” “Fairy Revels,” “Convent Bells,” and such like. [125] It is convenient to refer these descriptions to Chopin’s Studies, though of course they can be paralleled elsewhere. Cf. Chopin’s Studies in C, in A minor, in F, etc. [Illustration: Waltz by Schubert. Berlin Royal Bibliothek.]