"A weird magician, weary of the world, In sullen humor locked his charms all up Within a diamond casket, firmly clasped, And threw the key into the sea, and died. The manikins here tried with all their might; In vain! no tool can pick the flinty lock; His magic arts still slumber, like their master. A shepherd's child, along the sea-shore playing, Watches the waves, in hurrying, idle chase. Dreaming and thoughtless, as young maidens are, She dippeth her white fingers in the flood, And grasps, and lifts, and holds it! 'Tis the key. Up springs she, up, her heart still beating higher. The casket glances, as with eyes, before her. The key fits well, up flies the lid. The spirits All mount aloft, then bow themselves submissive To this their gracious, innocent, sweet mistress, Who with white fingers guides them in her play." The first, perhaps, to recognize the surpassing ability of that child was the young editor of the "Zeitschrift." Robert Schumann. On her first appearance, he wrote,--"Others make poetry,--she is a poem." And soon afterward,--"She early lifted the veil of Isis. The child looks calmly up,--the man would, perhaps, be dazzled by the brilliancy." From this moment there was an elasticity and purpose about the young composer, the secret of which no one knew, not even himself. Like one caught in the whorls of some happy dream, who will not pause to ask, "Whither?" he poured out before this child the half-revealed hopes striving within him; an equal spell was woven about her ingenuous and earnest heart, and their souls were joined in that purple morning; in due time they were to be rather _clenched_, through pain. It was under this baptismal touch of Love that Schumann wrote his first sonata,--"Florestan and Eusebius." It gained him at once a fame with all from whom fame was graceful. In the light of this period of his life must be interpreted those wonderful little "pieces" which mystify whilst they fascinate; without it their meaning is as strange as their names. Often did he say,--"I can write only where my life is in unison with my works." "Listen now to these," said Florestan, as he opened an album and struck the piano; "these are the voices of a new life." The "Alternatives," with song, "My peace is o'er"; "Evening Thoughts"; "Impromptus," (whose first theme was written by Clara): these; seemed like the emotion of some newly winged aspirant released from its chrysalis, resting on its first flower. But faster than planets through the abysses Love moves on. Florestan ceased, and there was a long silence; and then he told the unspeakable portion of his story by performing these two: "Sternenkranz," "Warum." Who has ever scaled the rapture of the former, or fathomed the pathos of the latter? Every summit implies its precipice; and the star-wreath that crowned Love was snatched at by the Fate which soon burdened two hearts with the terrible questioning, _Wherefore?_