The Romantic composers, on the other hand, treasure their moods. They enshrine their separate inspirations. It is the manner of their time. They are, as we have said, emotionally self-conscious. This is one of the marks by which we may know them. The architectural ideal loses their devotion. They lack, in the first place, the prime desire to sustain, in the second place, the power. The change shows itself distinctly in the works of Weber and Schubert, both of whom are recognized as the first of the Romantic composers. Take, for example, the sonatas of Weber. The movements are, as we have ventured to suggest, like broad pictures. They are a series of figures, of colors and shadows, like tapestries. They conform to the rules of form, but they have little or nothing of the spirit of it. They seem to cover the outlines of a story. They suggest the theatre. So little is their form all-sufficing that we are tempted to fit each with a chronicle taken from olden days of knighthood. At last Weber does so himself--gives us stories for two of his compositions. And the sonatas of Schubert, what a ruin are they! Moments of hot inspiration, of matchless beauty; well-nigh hours of fatal indifference and ignorance. On the other hand, he has left us short pieces which the publishers must needs call impromptus for lack of any other name; ‘Musical Moments,’ each the full and perfect expression of a single, swift inspiration. His muse whispers in his ear and before she has flown away he has written down what she prompted. She makes short visits, this muse. So much the worse for him if she starts him upon a sonata. He is soon left with nothing but a pen in his hand. Weber with his stories, Schubert with his short forms, are the prototypes of most of the Romantic composers to come. We shall find everywhere signs of the supremacy of the transient mood. Stories will be lacking, at least in pianoforte music; but there will be titles, both vague and specific, labelling the mood so that the music may exert an added charm. There will be something feverish, something not entirely healthy in it all. As we shall see, composers will expend their all in a single page. Yet there will come a warmth and a now sad, now wild poetry.