Beethoven had in common with all men of original and creative genius a strong repugnance to the drudgery of forcing the elements of his art into dull brains and awkward fingers; but that this repugnance was “extraordinary,” as Wegeler says, does not appear. A Frau von Bevervörde, one of his Bonn pupils, assured Schindler that she never had any complaint to make of her teacher in respect to either the regularity of his lessons or his general course of instruction. Nor is there anything now to be gathered from the traditions at Vienna which justifies the epithet. Ries’s experience is not here in point, for his relations to Beethoven were like those of little Hummel to Mozart. He received such instruction gratis as the master in leisure moments felt disposed to give. There was no pretence of systematic teaching at stated hours. The occasional neglect of a lesson at Baron Westphal’s, as detailed in the anecdote above given, may be explained on other ground than that of extraordinary repugnance to teaching. Beethoven was, in 1791-’92, just at the age when the desire for distinction was fresh and strong; he was conscious of powers still not fully developed; his path was diverse from that of the other young men with whom he associated and who, from all that can be gathered now on the subject, had little faith in that which he had chosen. He must have felt the necessity of other instruction, or, at all events, of better opportunities to compare his powers with those of others, to measure himself by a higher standard, to try the effect of his compositions in another sphere, to satisfy himself that his instincts as a composer were true and that his deviations from the beaten track were not wild and capricious. Waldstein, we know from Wegeler (and this is confirmed by his own words), had faith in him and his works, and it will be seen that another, Fischenich, had also. But what would be said of him and his compositions in the city of Mozart, Haydn, Gluck? To this add the restlessness of an ambitious youth to whom the routine of duties, which must long since in great measure have lost the charm of novelty, had become tedious, and the natural longing of young men for the great world, for a wider field of action, had grown almost insupportable. BEETHOVEN’S SWEETHEARTS IN BONN Or Beethoven’s _raptus_ may just then have had a very different origin; Jeannette d’Honrath, or Fräulein Westerhold, was perhaps the innocent cause--two young ladies whose names are preserved by Wegeler of the many for whom he says his friend at various times indulged transient, but not the less ardent, passions. The former was from Cologne, whence she occasionally came to Bonn to pass a few weeks with Eleonore von Breuning.