put an end to her importunities by a smart box on the ear. The practice, not uncommon in his time, of living with an unmarried woman as a wife, was always abhorrent to him--how much so, a sad story will hereafter illustrate; to a still greater degree an intrigue with the wife of another man. In his later years he so broke off his once familiar intercourse with a distinguished composer and conductor of Vienna, as hardly to return his greetings with common politeness. Schindler affirmed that the only reason for this was that the man in question had taken to his bed and board the wife of another. The names of two married women might be here given, to whom at a later period Beethoven was warmly attached; names which happily have hitherto escaped the eyes of literary scavengers, and are therefore here suppressed. Certain of his friends used to joke him about these ladies, and it is certain that he rather enjoyed their jests even when the insinuations, that his affection was beyond the limit of the Platonic, were somewhat broad; but careful enquiry has failed to elicit any evidence that even in these cases he proved unfaithful to his principles. A story related by Jahn is also to the point, viz.: that Beethoven only by the urgent solicitations of the Czerny family was after much refusal persuaded to extemporize in the presence of a certain Madame Hofdemel. She was the widow of a man who had attempted her life and then committed suicide; and the refusal of Beethoven to play before her arose from his having the general belief at the time, that a too great intimacy had existed between her and Mozart. Jahn, it may be observed, has recently had the great satisfaction of being able to prove the innocence of Mozart in this matter and of rescuing his memory from the only dark shadow which rested upon it. This much on this topic it has been deemed necessary to say here, not only for the reason above given, but to put an end to long-prevailing misconceptions and misconstructions of passages in Beethoven’s letters and private memoranda and to save farther comment when they shall be introduced hereafter. Beethoven’s fine sense for the lyric element in poetry was already conspicuous in the fine tact with which the texts of his songs, belonging in date to his last years in Bonn, were selected from the annual publications in which most of them appeared. Another fine proof of this is afforded by a glance through the older editions of Matthisson’s poems. In the fourth (1797), there are but two which are really well adapted to composition in the song-form--the “Adelaide” and “Das Opferlied.” A third Beethoven left unfinished. He had doubtless been led to attempt its composition through the force of its appeal to his personal feelings and sympathies, but soon discovering its non-lyrical character abandoned it. It is the “Wunsch.” Rochlitz in his letters from Vienna (1822) reports Beethoven’s humorous account of his enthusiasm for Klopstock in his early life: