But there are many anomalous things to the studious mind in the proceedings which we are reporting, which differ greatly from anything which could happen in a court of chancery or probate in Great Britain or America to-day. It is certainly repugnant to our present legal ethics that having filed a petition to reverse the action of one court Beethoven should not only have written private letters to a judge of the court of review, pleading his case on personal grounds, but that his counsel should have advised him to visit members of the higher court to present arguments in his behalf. But, no doubt, this was consistent with the customs of Austria a century ago; and it is what happened. Beethoven writes to Karl Winter, an _Appellationsrat_, and his lawyer tells him to engage him and one of his colleagues, Schmerling, in conversation on the subject. Perhaps Winter himself questioned the propriety of the proceeding, for in a Conversation Book somebody, who had evidently acted as messenger in the delivery of the letter, writes: “I gave it to Herr v. Winter; he kept me waiting and then said that he could give no answer, nor involve himself in a correspondence.” The letter in question was written on March 6. In it Beethoven says that he had prepared a memorial which he would place in his hands in a few days. From the outline given it is plain that the memorial contained a review of the case since the death of Beethoven’s brother. It had been prepared, said Beethoven, “believing that I owed it to myself to expose the falsity of the many slanders which have been uttered against me and to lay bare the intrigues of Madame van Beethoven against me to the injury of her own child, as also to place in its proper light the conduct of the Magistrates’ Court.” He charges that the Magistrates had summoned the widow and her son to a hearing without his knowledge and, as his nephew had told him, he had been urged and led on by his mother to make false accusations against him. He had also forwarded a document which proved the wavering and partisan conduct of the Magistrates. He repeats the charge about his nephew’s failure to advance in his studies and adds that the boy had had a hemorrhage which, had he not been on hand, might almost have cost him his life. These things were not attributable to Herr Tuscher for the reason that the Magistrates had given him too little support and he could not proceed with sufficient energy--this the writer could do in his capacity of uncle, guardian and defrayer of expenses. He asks that if it becomes necessary he and his nephew be examined, cites his expenditures to keep the boy two years in an educational institution, saying that he had received nothing from the widow in nearly fourteen months but would continue to pay the cost unselfishly in the future, and had set apart 4,000 florins which was on deposit in bank and was to go to his nephew on his death. Moreover, he had expectations from his