Like Schubert throughout his music, so has Schumann in his chamber-music left us his youth. He broke off the regular practice of it at about the same time of life as that at which Schubert died. During the next fourteen years a slow decline in the artistic freshness of his works made itself noticeable; and finally, alas, his genius deserted him. * * * * * At this time some one wrote: “Thalberg is a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz a lawyer, Kalkbrenner a troubadour, Madame Pleyel a sibyl, Döhler a pianist.” The reader will observe that Schumann is not even mentioned in this list. In Paris, as yet, he did not count. There was an utter absence of the frivolous in his music, and it had none of the qualities which were likely to conquer the great world. Chopin scarcely ever required his pupils to play the works of Schumann, and would seem to have had very little taste for them. On the other hand, it was Schumann who gave an impulse to the popularity of Chopin’s works in his magazine, as early as the appearance of the Variations on the theme “Reich’ mir die Hand” (Op. 2). Indeed, the rapid and enduring fame in Germany of Schumann’s only true rival was due to Schumann himself. “Chopin a poet.” It has become a very bad habit to place this poet in the hands of our youth. The concertos and polonaises being put aside, no one lends himself worse to youthful instruction than Chopin. Because his delicate touches inevitably seem perverse to the youthful mind, he has gained the name of a morbid genius. The grown man who understands how to play Chopin, whose music begins where that of another leaves off, whose tones show the supremest mastery in the tongue of music,--such a man will discover nothing morbid in him. Chopin, a Pole, strikes sorrowful chords, which do not occur frequently to healthy normal persons. But why is a Pole to receive less justice than a German? We know that the extreme of culture is closely allied to decay; for perfect ripeness is but the foreboding of corruption. Children, of course, do not know this. And Chopin himself would have been much too noble ever to lay bare his mental sickness to the world. And his greatness lies precisely in this, that he preserves the mean between immaturity and decay.