Mr. Mickley made at this period some valued acquaintances. Among these was the Italian composer Mercadante. At the time of Mickley's visit, in April, 1870, the composer, who was also president of the Conservatoire in Naples, had been blind for eight years. "The old gentleman," says Mickley (who, by the way, was only two years his junior), "held out his hand and bade me welcome. I told him it would be a lasting pleasure to have shaken hands with so highly distinguished a man, whose name had long since been favorably known in America. At this his face brightened; he arose from the sofa, shook my hand cordially, wishing me health, happiness, and a safe voyage." Later, at Brussels, he called on M. Fétiss, the famous French musical critic and biographer. At that time, in his eighty-eighth year, Fétis was a fugitive from Paris, owing to the troubles of the Franco-Prussian war. Mr. Mickley's picture of the veteran _littérateur_ and critic is an engaging one. He says, "Considering his great age, Mr. Fetis is very active. He climbed up the stepladder to get books and to show me such as he considered the most rare and interesting. He is not only active in body, but he retains all the faculties of his mind. He appears to have a very happy disposition. While I was with him a continual smile was on his face, and it seemed to give him great pleasure to show me his books. He has been engaged in collecting them for over fifty years, and they have cost him a sum equal to three hundred thousand dollars, exclusive of a great many presents. The first book on music was printed in 1480." At Trieste he spent some time with the United States consul there, Mr. Thayer, of Boston, best known to musical and literary people as the author of an exhaustive Life of Beethoven, which has been under way for nearly thirty years and is not yet finished. Mr. Thayer showed his visitor all the historic data and personal relics which he had collected for the book, of which at that date only one volume had been published. Since then Mercadante and F?s have been gathered to their fathers. Their genial guest is also gone. The industrious Mr. Thayer lives, with three volumes of the Life completed, and every American, either literary or musical, will wish him well on to the conclusion of his _magnum opus_.