Amongst Beethoven’s MSS. there was found after his death a Rondo inscribed in his own handwriting— “The rage over a lost penny, worked off in a Rondo.” That Rondo is one of the prettiest and the wittiest things in music. The average Englishman will scarcely be able to realise that a man like Beethoven, a genius, could make such a fuss over a lost penny, but those who know Germans will be less incredulous. Perhaps, too, it was not just the penny; it may have been the principle! At all times Beethoven was suspicious, and he always thought that he was being cheated. He very often was cheated, and when we remember that by this time he was stone-deaf, and that he had no sympathetic friend to whom he could confide his troubles, we shall begin to understand why he put his rage over a lost penny into his music, with all his other emotions. The piece (op. 129) is not easy to play, for it requires a reckless self-abandonment which is only possible to those players to whom it offers no technical difficulties. Bülow’s edition of it, published by Cotta, is the best. In one of his notes the editor says, “You can see the papers fly from the table, while the furious hunt proceeds,” and he declares that the man who wrote this brilliant Rondo could have written an _opera bouffe_ if he had tried. Much more might be said about Beethoven’s Romanticism. I have not touched at all upon his more exalted phases of feeling, the patriotism which was so wonderfully expressed in the seventh Symphony, the philosophy of life which culminated in the Choral Symphony with its impossible “Ode to Joy,” telling in tones what Goethe tried to tell in words at the end of the second part of _Faust_. My object had been to show that musical form, or perfect classicism, was the beautiful vessel which Beethoven made use of to carry his own human thoughts and emotions, and that, as Maurice Hewlett says in his book, _Pan and the Young Shepherd_— “Life goes to a tune, according as a man is tuneful, hath music.” FOOTNOTES: [1] The letter and its history are given in Thayer’s delightful _Life of Beethoven_. SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE. A STORY FOR GIRLS BY EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN, Author of “Greyfriars,” “Half-a-Dozen Sisters,” etc. CHAPTER XXIII. SUNSHINE. It was a balmy day at the end of April, and in the great conservatory at Monckton Manor a little group of people had established themselves amongst the tall ferns and flowers, and girlish voices and laughter mingled with the plash of the fountain in the centre of the warm fragrant place. Upon a cane lounge lay Oscar, white and thin, and frail of aspect, yet with something of the vigour and animation of returning health, which was very visible to those who had watched tremblingly beside him during the weeks of his tedious illness.