The other supreme German composer of the time, however, saw to the heart of the _durchkomponiertes Lied_ and produced at least one song that wholly anticipated Schubert. Mozart published in all thirty-four songs that can justly be distinguished from arias. Most of them, like ‘The Song of Freedom,’ are little different from the ordinary strophic songs of the day. But Mozart’s setting of Goethe’s poem, ‘The Violet,’ is a miniature masterpiece of the art-song.[18] Retaining the delicate sense of architecture which Mozart’s work never lost, it still follows the import of the words with faithful accuracy. The violet loved a maiden who came daily to walk in the meadow. It hoped that she would notice it. She never did. But one day she stepped on it and crushed it. And the violet was happy to meet its death through its loved one. The short, gasping phrases on the words _es sank, es starb_ (‘it sank, it died’) are imitated in the accompaniment so suggestively that one might almost call it realism. On the words, ‘_und sterb ich denn_’ (‘and though I die’) the music becomes quicker with the growing emotion of the dying flower. _So sterb ich doch durch sie!_ continues the flower in ecstasy, and on the beloved word, _sie_, the voice attains its highest note and its emotional climax. VI The last half of the eighteenth century in France gave the world some of the loveliest songs of the age. The types continued for a time to be those mentioned above, but the gain in grace and fluency over the preceding century was enormous. _Opéra comique_ was filled with _romances_ and _brunettes_ and _bergerettes_. Not a few songs, also, were composed independently. Among the latter class we should mention those of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), literary adventurer and musical dilettante, who entwined himself so strangely into the whole cultural life of France. Rousseau never had an adequate musical education. He had served as tutor in music in Switzerland and did not improve himself much with his desultory self-education after he came to Paris. But he was a true journalist, and no inadequacy of preparation could daunt him. He had that rare journalistic gift of knowing what people wanted ten years before they themselves knew it. His _opéra comique_, _Le devin du village_ (1752), still occasionally played, was the lightest of theatrical entertainments, but continued in unabating popularity for sixty years. Its success played no small part in setting or maintaining the tone of _opéra comique_ for the next half century. Its songs were chiefly the romances which were popular in Paris; they showed, perhaps, no great creative ability, but were extraordinary, like all Rousseau’s work, in catching a certain popular quality which escapes analysis. The composer’s activity as essayist and novelist, which places him as one of the greatest social forces of modern times, prevented his ever doing much work in music and the world is perhaps