To Brahms' activity on the advisory committee for the granting of Government stipendiums to young artists, combined with the growing feeling of mental leisure which must have come to him at this period of his mature mastership, must be ascribed the willingness shown by him, from the middle of the seventies onward, to concern himself with the musical progress of certain young composers who were courageous enough to ask his opinion and advice, and in whose works he discerned talent. Mention has been made of his prompt and emphatic appreciation of Dvorák. Amongst other musicians of distinction who in their youth enjoyed the advantage of his interest and friendship are Drs. Richard Heuberger, Eusebius Mandycweski (now holding the important position of librarian to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde), von Rottenberg, and Jenner. We spoke in the last chapter of some of the incidents of the master's friendship for Heuberger, who says that Brahms' great talent for teaching became continually clearer to him. 'With gifted young people who had already passed through the school curriculum, he might have achieved great things.' His criticism was so ruthless and searching as to be at first profoundly discouraging, but he could praise warmly, too, and there was no mistaking the pleasure he felt in being able to do so. His remarks to Heuberger, chiefly called forth by points in the manuscripts--often songs--laid before him, and by suggested improvements, usually served to elucidate general principles. The close rhythmical association of music with words, the conditions indispensable to the admission of irregularity of bar rhythm, the construction of melody, are but a few of the important points that were handled in the brief, incisive, pregnant manner which illumined every subject that he touched upon. 'Do you think,' said he one day, taking exception to an expression inadvertently used by Heuberger apropos to the construction of his melody, 'that any one of my half-dozen passable songs "occurred" to me? I had to worry myself with them rarely! One must be able--don't take this literally--to _whistle_ a song ... then it is good.' 'Those _must_ have been eyes, but perhaps not so interesting to other people,' he said, pointing to the too drawn-out setting of the words 'I saw two eyes last Sunday morn,' in one of Heuberger's manuscripts, and he improvised the passage in the closer form which the composer has retained in his published song 'Bitt' ihn o Mutter.'