Another young man who gained an extraordinary place in Beethoven’s esteem and affection, and who departed from Vienna before anything occurred to cause a breach between them, was a certain Karl Amenda, from the shore of the Baltic, who died some forty years later as Provost in Courland. He was a good violinist, belonged to the circle of dilettanti which Beethoven so much affected, and, on parting, received from the composer one of his first attempts at quartet composition. His name most naturally suggests itself to fill the blank in a letter to Ries, July, 1804, wherein some living person, not named, is mentioned as one with whom he (Beethoven) “never had a misunderstanding,” but he adds “although we have known nothing of each other for nearly six years,” which was not true of Amenda, since letters passed between them in 1801. The small portion of their written correspondence which has been made public shows that their friendship was of the romantic character once so much the fashion; and a letter of Amenda is filled with incense which in our day would bear the name of almost too gross flattery. But times change and tastes with them. His name appears once in the Zmeskall correspondence, namely, in a mutilated note now in the Royal Imperial Court Library, beginning “My cheapest Baron! Tell the guitarist to come to me to-day. Amenda is to make an _Amende_ (part torn away) which he deserves for his bad pauses (torn) provide the guitarist.” Karl Amenda was born on October 4, 1771, at Lippaiken in Courland. He studied music with his father and Chapelmaster Beichtmer, was so good a violinist that he was able to give a concert at 14 years of age, and continued his musical studies after he was matriculated as a student of theology at the University of Jena. After a three years’ course there he set out on a tour, and reached Vienna in the spring of 1798. There he first became precentor for Prince Lobkowitz and afterward music-teacher in the family of Mozart’s widow. How, thereupon, he became acquainted with Beethoven we are able to report from a document still in the possession of the family, which bears the superscription “Brief Account of the Friendly Relations between L. v. Beethoven and Karl Friedrich Amenda, afterward Provost at Talsen in Courland, written down from oral tradition”: