Streicher has abandoned the soft, yielding, repercussive tone of the other Vienna instruments, and at Beethoven’s wish and advice given his instruments greater resonance and elasticity, so that the virtuoso who plays with strength and significance may have the instrument in better command for sustained and expressive tones. He has thereby given his instruments a larger and more varied character, so that they must give greater satisfaction than the others to all virtuosi who seek something more than mere easy brilliancy in their style of playing. This shows us Beethoven in a new character--that of an improver of the pianoforte. The “young Stein” mentioned by Ries, was Nanette’s brother Carl Friedrich, who followed his sister to Vienna in 1804. One of Beethoven’s characteristic notes to Zmeskall, not dated, but belonging in these years, adds another name to the long list which proves that, however unpopular the composer may have been with his brother musicians, he possessed qualities and tastes that endeared him to the best class of rising young men in the learned professions: The Jahn brothers are as little attractive to me as to you. But they have so pestered me, and finally referred me to you as one of their visitors, that at the last I consented. Come then in God’s name, it may be I will call for you at Zizius’s, if not, come there direct, so that I may not be left there without the company of human beings. We will let our commissions wait until you are better able to look after them. If you cannot, come to the Swan to-day where I shall surely go. Dr. Johann Zizius, of Bohemia (born January 7, 1772), appears at the early age of 28, in the Staats-Schematismus for 1800, as professor of political science to the R. I. Staff of Guards; three years later he has the same professorship in the Theresianum, which he retained to his death in 1824, filling also in his later years the chair of constitutional law in the University. Dr. Sonnleithner made his acquaintance about 1820. In his very valuable and interesting “Musikalische Skizzen aus Alt-Wien” (“Recensionen,” 1863), he describes Zizius in a way which shows him to have been a man after Beethoven’s own heart until his increasing infirmity excluded him in great measure from mixed society.