fallen into the fatal error of making the finish, if not the difficulty of execution, superior to the presentation of beauty in form and in expression. This condition of musical taste has been accompanied or followed--we cannot surely say as effect from cause--by a withering of the creative musical faculty in all its fairest, highest branches. After Weber's death, which deprived the world of the only musician who promised to be worthy to follow Beethoven, came Schubert and Mendelssohn, neither of them very strong men; the latter decidedly weak, and deficient in creative faculty; the former far more fertile and original. Since their time there has been a blank in the annals of music of the higher kind. The creative faculty seems to be dead. It is not so; for nature is exhaustless, and in his due time the new composer will come. But new conceptions of beautiful musical forms are unknown to the present generation--indeed, were so to the foregoing. There is Schumann; but Schumann is only the strongest and best of the non-creative composers. He writes very elegantly, with harmonies unexceptionable and pleasing; his taste is generally exquisite; his handling of his themes masterly. But to what great end? None. He could not create a melody; and his harmony is plainly contrived, not conceived. All of Schumann's music that I ever heard, from symphony down to piano-forte music, is not worth Beethoven's Sonata in C sharp minor, or Mozart's quartet in C.[7] They have a certain sort of beauty and charm while you are hearing them, but you don't hanker after them; passages from them don't come to you when you are alone with troubled thoughts, and comfort you, hearten you, and build you up, as the remembered strains of Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven do. Simply, they are without real melody: they have only a well manufactured imitation of melody. Such enjoyment as they give is in a great measure intellectual. We admire the composer's skilful musical processes. Hence he is admired by professional musicians. And I remark, in passing, that professional criticism in any art, although it has a certain value, has not valid, determining power, and is not very trustworthy as a guide. It too generally runs on methods, processes, technicalities. If you would learn to paint, listen to the criticisms of a well instructed, capable painter; but if you would know and feel the highest things in art, remain an amateur and study nature and Raphael and Titian and Tintoretto. [7] No. 6, Breitkopf and Haertel.