Some one in Leipzig itself--he probably had reference to Bach--had, in a conversation, called it a burning shame, that it was with so many great musicians as it had been with the old painters: they were compelled to employ their immense powers on the fruitless and mind-destroying subjects of the church. Mozart was highly displeased at the remark, and said in a very sad manner, that that was some more art-twaddle. And he continued in some such strain as this: “With you, enlightened Protestants, as you call yourselves, when all your religion is the religion of the head, there may be some truth in this. But with us, it is otherwise. You do not at all feel the meaning of the words, _Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem_. [Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world; grant us peace.] But when one has, from his earliest childhood, been introduced into the sanctuary of our religion, and attended its service with fervor, and called those happy who knelt at the touching strains of the _Agnus Dei_ and received the communion, while the music gushing in tender joy from the hearts of the faithful, said, _Benedictus qui venit_, [Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,] it is very different; and, when now, these words, heard a thousand times, are placed before one to be set to music, it all returns and stirs the soul within him.” On this occasion, he recalled that first composition for the consecration of a church in his childhood, in Vienna, and the religious impressions he carried away from Italy of which we spoke above. He was now in Leipzig and became acquainted with Sebastian Bach in his church compositions. Necessity had again started him on an artistic journey. His friend and pupil, prince Charles Lichnowsky, who was soon destined to play an important part in Beethoven’s life also, had asked Mozart to travel with him to Berlin where he might probably be of some use to him with the music-loving Frederick William II. Our information concerning this journey and one that followed it, is to be found in those letters to his wife, of which she herself subsequently wrote that these unstudied epistles were the best indication of his way of thinking, of his peculiar nature and of his culture. She says: “The rare love for me which these letters breathe is supremely characteristic of him. Those written in his later years are just as tender as those which he must have written during the first years of our married life, are they not?” In those letters, indeed, we have the man, Mozart as he really was, and what he had gone through in life, before us.