He was sixteen when he went up to London for the first time, and it had been arranged that he should take lodgings in Bloomsbury, and try to hear some of the great pianists, and, if possible, get some help privately, before he tried for the scholarship. He got a bedroom at the top of a house in Coptic Street, and hired a piano, which took up most of the space left over by the bed; and he began to go to the shilling seats at concerts, especially when there was any piano music to be heard. Just then several of the most famous pianists were in London; he went to hear them, at first with a horrible apprehension, and then more boldly, as he saw what could be learned from them, and yet seemed to fancy that they, too, might have found something to learn from him. He heard their thunders, and laughed: that was not his idea of the instrument, a thing, in their hands, that could overtop an orchestra playing fortissimo. He saw these athletes fight with the poor instrument as if they fought with a dangerous wild beast. Some used it as an anvil to hammer sparks out of it; the chords rang and rebounded as if iron had struck iron; it was the new art of attack, and piano-makers were strengthening their defences daily. Some displayed an incredible agility, and invented all sorts of ugly difficulties, in order to overcome them; they reminded him of the dancing girls he had read of, who used, at Roman feasts, to leap head-foremost into the midst of a circle of sword-blades, and dance there on their hands, and leap out again. He knew that he could not do any of these things, as he heard them done; but was that really the way to treat music, or the way to treat the piano? * * * * *