Alexander Wheelock Thayer was born in South Natick, Massachusetts, on October 22nd, 1817, and received a liberal education at Harvard College, whence he was graduated in 1843. He probably felt that he was cut out for a literary career, for his first work after graduation was done in the library of his _Alma Mater_. There interest in the life of Beethoven took hold of him. With the plan in his mind of writing an account of that life on the basis of Schindler’s biography as paraphrased by Moscheles, and bringing its statements and those contained in the “Biographische Notizen” of Wegeler and Ries and a few English accounts into harmony, he went to Europe in 1849 and spent two years in making researches in Bonn, Berlin, Prague and Vienna. He then returned to America and in 1852 became attached to the editorial staff of “The New York Tribune.” It was in a double sense an attachment; illness compelled him to abandon journalism and sever his connection with the newspaper within two years, but he never gave up his interest in it. He read it until the day of his death, and his acquaintance with the member of the Tribune’s staff who was destined to have a part in the completion of his lifework began when, a little more than a generation after he had gone to Europe for the second time, he opened a correspondence with him on a topic suggested by one of this writer’s criticisms. In 1854 he went to Europe again, still fired with the ambition to rid the life-history of Beethoven of the defects which marred it as told in the current books. Schindler had sold the _memorabilia_ which he had received from Beethoven and Beethoven’s friend Stephan von Breuning to the Prussian Government, and the precious documents were safely housed in the Royal Library at Berlin. It was probably in studying them that Thayer realized fully that it was necessary to do more than rectify and harmonize current accounts of Beethoven’s life if it were correctly to be told. He had already unearthed much precious ore at Bonn, but he lacked the money which alone would enable him to do the long and large work which now loomed before him. In 1856 he again came back to America and sought employment, finding it this time in South Orange, New Jersey, where Lowell Mason employed him to catalogue his musical library. Meanwhile Dr. Mason had become interested in his great project, and Mrs. Mehetabel Adams, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, also. Together they provided the funds which enabled him again to go to Europe, where he now took up a permanent residence. At first he spent his time in research-travels, visiting Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf (where he found material of great value in the archives of the old Electoral Courts of Bonn and Cologne), Frankfort, Paris, Linz, Graz, Salzburg, London and Vienna. To support himself he took a small post in the Legation of the United States at Vienna, but exchanged this after a space for the U. S. Consulship at Trieste, to which office he was