One topic more demands brief notice before closing this chapter. In the “Merrymaking of the Countryfolk” of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, at the point where the fun grows most fast and furious and the excitement rises to its height, an ominous sound, as of distant thunder, gives the first faint warning of the coming storm. So in the life of the composer at the moment of that highest success and prosperity, which we have labored to place vividly before the mind of the reader, just when he could first look forward with well-grounded confidence to the noblest gratification of a musician’s honorable ambition, a new and discordant element thrust itself into the harmony of his life. This was the symptoms of approaching deafness. His own account fixes their appearance in the year 1799; then they were still so feeble and intermittent, as to have caused him at first no serious anxiety; but in another year they had assumed so much the appearance of a chronic and increasing evil, as to compel him to abandon plans for travel which he had formed, and for which he was preparing himself, with great industry and perseverance, to appear in the twofold capacity of virtuoso and composer. Instead, therefore, in 1801, of having “long since journeyed through half the world,” he, for two years, had been confined to Vienna or its immediate vicinity, vainly seeking relief from surgeons and physicians. It is not difficult to imagine calamities greater than that which now threatened Beethoven--as, the loss of sight to a Raphael or Rubens in the height of their fame and powers; a partial paralysis or other incurable disease of the brain cutting short the career of a Shakespeare or Goethe, a Bacon or Kant, a Newton or Humboldt. Better the untimely fate of a Buckle, than to live long years of unavailing regret over the blasted hopes and promise of early manhood. In such cases there remains no resource; hope itself is dead. But to Beethoven, even if his worst fears should prove prophetic and his infirmity at length close all prospects of a career as virtuoso and conductor, the field of composition still remained open. This he knew, and it saved him from utter despair. Who can say that the world has not been a gainer by a misfortune which stirred the profoundest depths of his being and compelled the concentration of all his powers into one direction?