To the commercialized mind of to-day it is possible that the picture which has just been presented here of a superlatively great artist hawking his creations in the courts of Europe, appealing to his friends and patrons among the great to act as his go-betweens, railing against the tardy and permitting those who were prompt in payment to wait unconscionable periods for their property, may seem to present as little of the aspect of debasement of genius and its products as it did at a time when great musicians were menials in the households of the highborn, and thrift could only follow fawning. But Beethoven had done much to exalt art and emancipate the artist, and what would have caused little comment in the case of his predecessors amongst court musicians was scarcely venial in him who preached a new ethic as well as artistic evangel. And so, to minds untainted by trade and attuned to a love of moral as well as æsthetic beauty, the spectacle which Beethoven presents in 1823 must be quite as saddening as that disclosed by his dealings with the publishers in the years immediately preceding. A greater measure of commiseration goes out to him now, however, because of the evidence that the new phase cost him greater qualms of conscience and that the exigencies which impelled him were more pressing. His physical ailments were increasing; his deafness had put a stop to his appearances in public as an artist; his eyes were troubling him; there was no lessening of his concern about his ward, but an increase in the cost of his maintenance; his income was continually dwindling because of his lessening productivity, notwithstanding that the fees which he could command for new works (and even the remnants of his youthful activity) had reached dimensions of which he had never dreamed in the heyday of his powers; he felt the oppressive burden of his debts more and more as his unreasoning love for his foster-son prompted him to make provision against the future. The royal subscription was, no doubt, a welcome scheme which, if not suggested by his advisers, was certainly encouraged by them; but it must have cost his proud soul no little humiliation to have his application rejected after he had so deeply bent “the pregnant hinges of the knee.” The publishers gave him less concern. They were his natural enemies and he theirs--“hellhounds who licked and gnawed his brains,” as he expressed it in a letter to Holz in 1825; yet he knew that he would need them, and he knew also that as soon as he went to them, and the mass appeared in print, the manuscript copies which he had sold would be all but worthless. But this may have troubled him little, as he, in all likelihood, shared Schindler’s conviction that there was no permanency of interest in the work on the part of the crowned heads and that they would not be troubled by the appearance of the work in print. Patronage of art is part of the obligation which rests upon royalty, and it