It is well to skeleton this period with five dates. The first is the one already met, 1789. The next is the assumption of the consulate by Napoleon in 1799, which was practically the beginning of the empire. The next is the fall of Napoleon, which we may place in 1814, after the battle of Leipzig, or in 1815, after Waterloo, as we prefer. The next is 1830, when, after conservative reaction throughout Europe, the mobs in most of the great capitals raised insurrections, and in some cases overthrew governments and obtained some measure of constitutional law. And the last is 1848, when these popular outbreaks recurred in still more serious form, and with a proletarian consciousness that made this revolution the precursor of the twentieth century as certainly as 1789 was the precursor of the nineteenth. We cannot here give the details of the mighty and prolonged struggle--we shall only recall to the reader the astounding sequence of cataclysms and exploits that shook Europe; roused its consciousness strata by strata; remodelled its face, its thought, its ideals, its laws, and its arts. Paris was the nervous centre of this upheaval, the stage upon which the most conspicuous acts were paraded; but every blow struck in that arena reëchoed, multiplied, throughout Europe, just as every wave of the turmoil originating in any part of Europe recorded itself upon the seismograph of Paris. From the tyranny and unthinking submission of before 1789 we pass to a period of constitutional tolerance of the monarchical form; thence to the aggressive propaganda for republican principles and the terror; thence to the personal exploits of a popular hero, arousing wonder and admiration while imposing a new sort of tyranny. Stimulated imaginations now give birth to new enthusiasms, stir up the feelings of national unity and pride; to consciousness of nationality succeeds consciousness of class--reactions and restorations bring new revolutions, successful mobs impose terms on submissive monarchs, at Paris in 1833 as at Berlin in 1848; then finally follows the communist manifesto. France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, even England, were convulsed with this glorious upheaval; and not kings and soldiers alone, but men of peaceful moods--workingmen, men of professions, poets, artists, musicians--were borne into this whirlpool of politics. Musicians of the eighteenth century had no thoughts but of their art; those of the nineteenth were national enthusiasts, celebrants of contemporary heroes, political philosophers, propagandists, and agitators. What wonder? Since the days of Julius Cæsar had there been any concrete events to take hold of men’s imaginations as these did? They set all men ‘thinking big.’ If the difference between a Haydn symphony of 1790 and Beethoven’s Ninth of 1826 is the difference between a toy shop and the open world, is not the cause to be found mainly in these battles of the nations? Not only Beethoven--Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, and