And yet, at this very time, Mozart was suffering from want, actual want! The first of those mournful letters to his friend Puchberg, the merchant, is dated the 17th of June of this year. These letters afford us a picture of his condition during the last years of his life. They even foreshadow the sad, premature end of our artist. He received from _Don Giovanni_, in Vienna, altogether two hundred and twenty-five guldens. His compositions were in contents and execution too difficult for the dilettanti, and his feeling and views on art did not allow him to write otherwise; so that the publishers were not able to pay him much. Besides, those parts of his compositions which were really popular, were everywhere republished. Concerts could not be given all the time, and his receipts from all sources were too irregular. His household expenses, spite of his simple way of living, were great. He had several children, in quick succession, and Constance was taken, repeatedly, very seriously ill--in one instance, for eight whole months. He closes one of his letters, asking for, and imploring a little “momentary assistance,” according to his friend’s pleasure, as follows: “My wife was sick again yesterday. To-day, thank God, she is better: yet I am very unhappy, always wavering between worry and hope.” This affliction of body and mind was a constant trial of his better nature. His letters next to his music afford us the most beautiful proof of the purity of his soul and the depth of his feelings. Yet the last years of Mozart’s life disclose to us a mournful picture of the existence of a German artist; and it is only Mozart’s own spirit that can lift us high above the sadness and acrimony which we are disposed to feel here. His mind did not grow gloomy. Like the phœnix, he always rose out of the ashes of the want that consumed him--more brilliantly arrayed and fitted for a grander flight. And it is truer of scarcely any artist than of him, that his last note was like the dying strains of the swan, an echo from another and higher world, a sound at once joyful and melancholy such as had never been heard before.