The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 7 (of 7)Malkin, Arthur Thomas
History
The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 7 (of 7)
Malkin, Arthur Thomas
Biography
The compositions of Mozart are of every kind, and so numerous, that we
cannot pretend to give even a bare list of them. But it may be observed,
generally, that from the sonata to the symphony, from the simplest
romance to the most elaborate musical drama, he—whose career was stopped
before he had completed his thirty-sixth year—composed in every
imaginable style, and excelled in all. In each class he furnished models
of the greatest attainable excellence: “exquisite melodies, profound
harmonies, the playful, the tender, the pathetic, and the sublime,” are
to be found among his works. It is the exclusive privilege of first rate
merit to be more admired as it is better known; and while inferior
composers enjoy their day of fashion, and are forgotten, Mozart’s fame
will continue to expand in proportion as mankind advances in taste and
knowledge.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._
LOYOLA.
_From a Print by Bolswert, after a Picture by Rubens._
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]
[Illustration]
LOYOLA.
The family-name of the founder of the Order of Jesuits, commonly called
IGNATIUS LOYOLA, is stated by Ranke, Romischen Papste, vol. 1, on the
authority of judicial records, to have been Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde.
He was born in 1491, at the Castle of Loyola, in the province of
Guipuscoa, in Spanish Biscay; and being destined to the profession of
arms, was sent, at an early age, to learn the rudiments of war and
gallantry, at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. He made great
proficiency in both. Endowed with a lively imagination, and an ardent
temperament, he became distinguished in arms, and first applied his
talents, which were destined to such different purposes, to the
composition of poetry. Thus he spent his youth; and he had already
reached his thirtieth year, when he was called to the defence of
Pampluna against the attack of the French. On this occasion he displayed
his wonted valour, and while standing in the breach of the castle, he
was struck by a cannon shot which fractured his leg. A tedious
confinement followed; in part occasioned, as some assert, by his great
anxiety to preserve the symmetry of the limb, which led him to undergo a
second operation, to remove a deformity which had been occasioned by an
ill-set bone. To relieve his weariness he called for some books of
chivalry, but in their place he was supplied with the Lives of Saints,
and other devotional works. He read them with extraordinary eagerness.
He admired the zeal of those holy men; he sympathized in their
sufferings; he envied their glory; and he aspired at their eternal
recompense. His thoughts and wishes were thus turned into a new channel,
and he entered on the path of spiritual warfare, with his natural ardour
stimulated and inflamed by religious devotion.
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