He now, in his sixth year, learned to play the violin, and his father neglected nothing to give him, in every way, the best musical instruction. For he was himself an excellent composer, and had written a “violin method” which had a great reputation in its day, and was honored with translation. Mozart’s education in music continued even during the journey. Instruction in playing the organ was soon added to instruction in the use of the violin. The next scene of the marvels of the little ones was Southern Germany. This was in the summer of 1763. In Heidelberg, Mozart’s little feet flew about on the pedals with such rapidity that the clergyman in charge made a record of it in writing on the organ itself. Goethe heard him in Frankfort, and thus obtained a standard by which to measure all subsequent men of musical genius whom he chanced to meet. In his declining years, Goethe listened to a child similarly gifted, Felix Mendelssohn. In Paris, also, the court was very gracious to the children; but when little Wolfgang, with the ingenuousness of childhood, tried to put his arms about the neck of the painted Madame de Pompadour as he had about that of Maria Theresa, he was met with a rebuff, and, wounded to the quick, he cried: “Who is that person there that won’t kiss me? The empress kissed me.” He always thought a great deal of Maria Theresa, and his heart, through life, had a nook in it for her, and was ever loyal to the imperial family, as we shall see further on. The princesses were all the more amiable in consequence, and did not trouble themselves about etiquette. Every one wondered to hear so young a child tell every note the moment he heard it; compose without the aid of a piano, and play accompaniments to songs by ear only. No wonder that he was greeted everywhere with the loudest applause, and that the receipts were so flatteringly large. The reception extended to them in London in 1764, was still kinder; for the royal couple themselves were German, and Handel had already laid a lasting foundation there for good music; while the French music of the time seemed to our travelers to be exceedingly cold and empty--“a continual and wearisome bawling.” Their stay in England was, on this account, a very long one, and the father made use of the opportunity he found there to give an excellent Italian singer as an instructor to Wolfgang, who soon mastered the Italian style of melody, which was then the prevailing one. It was in London that Mozart wrote his first symphonies.