Of Beethoven, Professor F.L. Ritter, in one of his excellent lectures on music, says, "Beethoven's compositions appeal to the whole being of the listener. They captivate the whole soul, and, for the time being, subdue it to an intense, powerful, poetical influence, impressing it with melancholy, sorrow, and sadness, elevating it heavenwards in hopeful joy and inspired happiness." The following description[6] of Beethoven's last hours on earth, as he was nearing the time "When all of genius which can perish dies," although replete with sadness, is yet a tribute so touchingly beautiful and eloquent as to make it well worthy of insertion here. [Footnote 6: Anonymously contributed to the Boston Folio for May, 1877.] "THE LAST MOMENTS OF BEETHOVEN. "He had but one happy moment in his life, and that moment killed him. "He lived in poverty, driven into solitude by the contempt of the world, and by the natural bent of a disposition rendered harsh, almost savage, by the injustice of his contemporaries. But he wrote the sublimest music that ever man or angel dreamed. He spoke to mankind in his divine language, and they disdained to listen to him. He spoke to them as Nature speaks in the celestial harmony of the winds, the waves, the singing of the birds amid the woods. Beethoven was a prophet, and his utterance was from God. "And yet was his talent so disregarded, that he was destined more than once to suffer the bitterest agony of the poet, the artist, the musician. He doubted his own genius. "Haydn himself could find for him no better praise than in saying, 'He was a clever pianist.' "Thus was it said of Gericault, 'He blends his colors well;' and thus of Goethe, 'He has a tolerable style, and he commits no faults in orthography.' "Beethoven had but one friend, and that friend was Hummel. But poverty and injustice had irritated him, and he was sometimes unjust himself. He quarrelled with Hummel, and for a long time they ceased to meet. To crown his misfortunes, he became completely deaf. "Then Beethoven retired to Baden, where he lived, isolated and sad, in a small house that scarcely sufficed for his necessities. There his only pleasure was in wandering amid the green alleys of a beautiful forest in the neighborhood of the town. Alone with the birds and the wild flowers, he would then suffer himself to give scope to his genius, to compose his marvellous symphonies, to approach the gates of heaven with melodious accents, and to speak aloud to angels that language which was too beautiful for human ears, and which human ears had failed to comprehend. "But in the midst of his solitary dreaming a letter arrived, which brought him back, despite himself, to the affairs of the world, where new griefs awaited him.