that they could have thrived, that is developed that art, the germ’s of which they felt themselves to possess as a talent confided to them. We may inquire, more particularly now, how it stood with music and the theatre in those days. Many of the great houses had music of their own; the wealthiest princes had not unfrequently their private orchestra; other families string-quartets or the piano; and the latter was, as Ph. E. Bach says, intended for music that went direct to the heart, and not simply for children to practice on. No such golden age of music had been seen since the days of the North German School for organists, which had produced that eighth wonder of the world, Sebastian Bach; and Beethoven recalled it, with a feeling of melancholy, when, with the great wars of the Revolution a desolate period began, in which men’s souls and with them music, the soul’s own art, were struck dumb. Philip Emanuel Bach, the younger son of John Sebastian Bach, it was, who had led music out of the stage which had religion for its center, and opened to it by his sonatas _fuer Kenner und Liebhaber_, the domain of purely human thought and feeling. “He is the parent, we the children,” said Mozart, speaking of himself, and J. Haydn. Haydn also made a similar admission. It was these two men indeed, who, so to speak, gave expression to the whole of human life in this unrestrained language of music, and who, together with Beethoven, opened the hearts of their age and of humanity, by their sonatas, symphonies, and quartets. This explains why Mozart was able to write that the ladies detained him at the piano a whole hour after the concert, adding: “I think I should be sitting there still, if I had not stolen away!”