It is not a pretty picture this, but is a characteristic. It must please latter-day pagans who flout the niceties of society. Not all the Beethoven sonatas were admired to the studying point. The early ones—mere exercises of a young athlete juggling with the weapons of his grandsire—alone called for commendation. Dedicated to Haydn, the first three did not excite the ire of critics or teachers. But as the man grew, as he felt, suffered, and knew, then his canvases began to excite fear and repulsion. “Why these gloomy tints, Herr van Beethoven?” they cried, and listened eagerly to his rivals, the Wölffls, the Gelineks, the Hummels. There is a modishness even in the art of writing for the piano, and Beethoven despised modishness, as would have Diana of the Ephesians the millinery of Lutetia. So he was neglected for a half-century, and the long-fingered, long-haired virtuosi overran Europe, with their variations, their fantasias, their trills, and their trickeries. From Hummel to Thalberg effect was their god, and before the shrine of the titillating, the ornamental and the suave, womankind prostrated herself, pouring out homage and gold—the latter provided by patient fathers and husbands. It was a carnage, a musical rout, and a superior warrior like Liszt trailed thousands of scalps after his chariots during triumphal tours. The mediæval dancing manias were as nothing when compared with the hysteria evoked by the new Pied Piper of Hungary. Chopin never had the physique, and Mendelssohn was too moral, to copy Liszt. These two men wrote lovely music, feminine music; while down in Vienna a young man named Schubert died, after writing incomparable songs and much beautiful piano music. His sonatas are not so feminine in texture as his musical Moments, impromptus and dances. This music is made for woman, with its intimate, tender feeling, its loose and variegated structure. Von Weber composed chivalric sonatas and that marvellous epitome of the dance, The Invitation. Schumann, broken in fingers through too curious experimentings, dreamed twilight music, which his gifted wife Clara interpreted to an incredulous world.