In the summer of 1834, Paganini, after an absence of six years, returned to his native land. He was now a rich man, and he invested part of his fortune in landed property, purchasing, among others, the Villa Gajona, near Parma, which he made his home--the first he could really call his own, and he was in his fifty-second year! His health was irretrievably broken down; he suffered from consumption of the larynx, and was losing the power of speech. He now sought peace and quiet, and thought of preparing for publication a complete edition of his compositions, which, if he had accomplished it, might have led to the explanation of his alleged secret. In November, or December, Paganini gave a concert at Piacenza--on the very same boards where he almost began his brilliant career--for the benefit of the poor; this was the first time he had been heard in Italy since 1828. The year 1835, Paganini passed alternately at Genoa, Milan, and his villa near Parma. The cholera then raging at Genoa was the cause of the rumour of Paganini's death. The dread scourge had claimed him for a victim, it was said, and the Continental journals devoted columns to him in the form of obituary notices. The only English contribution to the necrology of Paganini known to me was written by Chorley in the _Athenæum_. It is both interesting and curious: for Chorley manages to squeeze in his account of Paganini at the Dublin festival, which the editor evidently cut out in 1831. That scarcely concerns us now, though it relates that the _furore_ caused by Paganini's performance could not be appeased until he had mounted the grand pianoforte, in order that the audience might obtain a better view of his lank proportions! An extract from his notice must be given. It begins thus:--"_E Morto!_--the words which the silent and absorbed man murmured to himself, in a tone of deep feeling, after listening to one of Beethoven's magnificent symphonies, are now--alas!--to be uttered sadly for their speaker--Paganini is dead! "We would fain believe that the newspaper reports are in error.... Let us hope that the intelligence from Genoa, received this week [September], that the artist had been carried off by the sudden and fearful death of cholera, may, by some happy chance, prove one of those 'mistakes which it gives them pleasure to contradict.' But, should it not then, indeed, may Music put on sackcloth and sit in ashes for her High Priest!" Then follows an "appreciation," to use a modern expression, to which reference may be made later.