In piano-literature Mendelssohn is the composer for young girls, the elegant romancist of the drawing-room. From the sphere of polite literature, where passion must be trimmed and neat, and where there is no sentence passed without amiability, and a smiling _laissez-faire_ rules the day, there penetrates into glowing romance the limitation of this neatness, and a formality well adapted to the drawing-room. The old Volkslieder, the simple Ritornells, the tones of aspiration in forgotten old airs, the dances of elves, the moonlight love-scenes, are all brought on to a parquet for the delectation of comfortable people. It is a gilt-edged lyricism, without any unbefitting exhibition of unseemly feeling; a mere art of perfumery compared with Bach and Schubert. The development of the pieces shall exhibit nothing to shock; it shall run on in the most intelligible manner. A dainty accompaniment-figure is formed, which plays some bars alone; then follows the melodious and soothing theme, which moves in certain sequences and delights to rock itself to and fro on related degrees of the scale. The strophic divisions are clearly defined; small cadenzas mark the main sections; and at the conclusion there appears a miniature canon or a vigorous episode, which leaves behind a good impression on the mind of the satisfied listener. At the head of this enormous branch of piano-literature stands Mendelssohn. His “Songs without words,” of which six books appeared in his life and two more after his death, gave the decisive form to this class of Short Story in music. All the technical devices of the time, the wide stretches, the broken accompaniments, the multiplicity of rhythms, are here adapted to the drawing-room. The Volkslieder are put, as it were, into evening dress. That in A minor is surrounded towards the conclusion with octaves, which are merely technical, and without emotional significance. The Funeral March, compared with that of a Beethoven, is as if it were written for a set of marionettes. The Spring Song is, so to speak, set on wires. And all is so beautiful, so objectionably beautiful! It tells us all through that it is beautiful, and the composer moves his head to and fro with the music, and says, “How beautiful it is!” Until at last, when we have grown to man’s estate, we can endure it all no longer; or at most we take up once again from time to time this or that song, preferably one in quick time--perhaps the Spinning-Song, the best of all.[131]