Ferdinand Hiller began the endless succession of these eclectic musicians. But the last of the solid old style was Alkan, a solitary, eccentric, misanthropic, but withal interesting old man. He was born in Paris in 1813, and remained there. He was one of the many pupils of Zimmermann, that modest but most influential teacher. Alkan’s pieces were highly esteemed by Bülow, who gave him a place in his list of Étude-masters. In his works, which are chiefly Études and Preludes, there speaks a Berlioz, with an elemental and realistic power. He stands in his kind half-way between Chopin and Liszt. Some pieces, like the highly original Op. 39, 1, do not easily fade out of the memory. The seventh of the twelve Études, dedicated to Fétis, is a remarkably significant Chopin-like Ballade in Berlioz’ style, with kettle-drum rolls, and other most peculiar harmonic and orchestral effects. In the “Allegro Barbaro” of the fifth Étude he gives full play to his propensity to exotic phrases of foreign colouring. He works with uncanny, lengthy unisons, or with cutting climbing ninths. An out-and-out romantic, he delights not merely to rush into the middle of his pieces with explanatory words--“Mors” is one of these--but he has hit upon the most original titles that ever an association of ideas led a composer to adopt: “Pseudo-naïveté,” “Fais Dodo,” “Heraclitus and Democritus,” “Railroad,” “Odi profanum vulgus,” “Morituri te salutant.” To play his pieces is as difficult as to construe the Talmud. [Illustration: Stephen Heller. Ferdinand Hiller. Adolf Henselt.] A constant succession of romantic writers of Études or small pieces stretches from that era to our own. First stands the intellectual Volkmann; next, the somewhat too dainty Kirchner, a regular album-writer, who went so far in his admiration for Schumann as to publish “New Davidsbündler” and “The New Florestan and Eusebius.” Adolf Henselt, who lived at St Petersburg, practised an extraordinary longdrawn legato technique. He is still esteemed for his tolerable F minor Concerto, and for his second and fifth Études, especially the well-known “Si oiseau j’étais.” Stephen Heller, who lived in Paris, wrote a hundred and forty-nine works, almost exclusively for the piano. He is a combination of Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and water; but we light occasionally on passages of some inspiration. His well-known Saltarellos and Tarantelles, his effective “Forellen” (Trout) Fantasia, and his excellent “Danses Bois,” are in the taste of the time. More important was his pretty idea, in the Freischütz Studies, of uniting operatic motives and étude-practice in an organic and poetic combination. [Illustration: Tschaïkowski.]