was repeated at a concert for the sufferers from an inundation in Silesia, on the 13th of July, and this repetition has been confounded with its original performance. At the close of our season Mendelssohn made a tour through the Scotch Highlands, and visited the Isles of Fingal; he returned through the English lake district and then spent some time at the house of Mr. Taylor in Wales, to whose daughters are dedicated the three charming pianoforte sketches which he wrote while he was there. Soon after his return to London, he was thrown from a cab, and his knee was so injured by the fall, that he was unable for some little time to return to Germany, as he had intended. To solace his confinement to his room, he composed the little opera of "Heimkehr aus der Fremde," published in English under the title of "Stranger and Son," of which Klingemann wrote the drama. This Mendelssohn designed to celebrate the silver wedding (the twenty-fifth wedding day) of his parents; and he recovered timely to reach home with the love offering, and direct its private performance on the occasion.
In the autumn of 1830, Mendelssohn went to Italy. He was in Rome from November till the following April, and there composed two of his most important works—the setting of Göthe's ballad of the First Walpurgis Night, and the Reformation Symphony. This latter was intended to commemorate the Reformation, and it comprises some remarkable elaboration of the chorale "Ein feste Burg," said to have been sung by Luther as he was led to trial. Mendelssohn withheld it from the public, as he did many other compositions, some of which have been posthumously printed; and his brother, who possesses the MS., persists in refusing to allow it to be heard; but the friends to whom the author showed the work are unbounded in their admiration of its beauties. He passed some time at Naples, and visited Venice, everywhere enchanting society by his versatile genius, everywhere imbibing inspiration from the atmosphere of classical art that surrounded him. He then made a sojourn in Switzerland, delighting as fully in the wonders of nature which met him there at every turn, as he had done in the glories of art, when ranging through the ruins and the galleries of Italy. In February, 1832, he went to Paris; but though he was well received there, the character and the customs of the place were uncongenial to him. Recovered from a severe attack of cholera, he came again to England in April. The chief events of this visit were, the first performance of his Concerto in G minor, and the production of his overture, "The Isles of Fingal," in which he pourtrays the effect upon his poetical mind of the romantic scenery which had kindled his imagination in the Hebrides. He left England with a commission from the Philharmonic Society, to compose three new works for them by the following year, for the sum of £100. The fulfilment of this engagement did not so engross him, but that he could give much attention to the practical department of his art. He directed the performance in Berlin of Bach's Passions-musik with great success, but nevertheless failed in a competition for the directorship of the Singing Academy in that city—a circumstance which tended to confirm his early dislike to the Prussian capital. Mendelssohn came back to London in April, 1833, bringing for the Philharmonic the aria of "Infelice," the overture in C, which, from the prominence throughout it of brass instalments, he used to call the Trumpet Overture (unprinted); and the Symphony in A major—in which are embodied his impressions of his Italian sojourn; and these were all performed during the season. He offered the Symphony for publication to the house of Cramer & Co., which they, not having yet realized the commercial value of those of his works they had printed, refused: offended at this, he would never afterwards make an assignment to them. This exquisite masterpiece not being then printed, he always deferred its publication; and its performance, therefore (until it was printed after his death), was restricted to the concerts of our Philharmonic Society. Mendelssohn left London for a while to conduct the Lower Rhine musical festival at Düsseldorf. There he conceived the idea of his beautiful overture to the national tale of Melusine, which was suggested to him by a picture illustrative of the subject. The overture was played first by our Philharmonic Society in the following April, when it was indifferently received. Of this work, as of many others, he made an entirely new score before he printed it. At Düsseldorf his worth was so keenly perceived, that he was invited to the direction of the Singing Academy and the theatre, which he undertook, it being his first professional engagement, his father's wealth having rendered him independent of the occupations from which, for the most part, a musician derives his maintenance. A fruit of this appointment was the much praised dramatic music of Der Standhafte Prinz (unprinted), a play of Calderon translated into German by Immermann, and produced in 1834. Mendelssohn was offered the musical professorship in Leipsic university in 1835, which he declined. He had the strongest aversion to pedantry, and detested theoretical discussions, as being the cause, if not the result of pedantic feeling, and thus he dreaded to fill a university chair, regarding it as the seat of a pedagogue. More fortunate was the application to him, of the committee of the famous subscription concerts, given in the Gewandhaus at the same town, to become conductor of these performances. He entered upon this office in September, 1835, and his discharge of it, raised the concerts to a memorable celebrity. The death of his father, in November, was a severe shock to Mendelssohn, and it added one more to the regretful associations in his thoughts with the city of Berlin, where it took place. He roused himself from this calamity to complete the oratorio of "St. Paul," which was produced at the Düsseldorf festival on Whitsunday, 1836. This must be regarded as the opening of a new period in musical history; the Deluge of Schneider, the three Oratorios of Spohr, the Mount of Olives of Beethoven, and even the Creation of Haydn, have all such a comparative secularity, not to say lightness of character, as, still more than their unscriptural text, dissociates them from the sacred masterpieces of Handel. "St. Paul" approximates to these in its style no less than in its subject, and it was thus the first oratorio produced since the days of the author of Messiah, wherein the spirit reappears in which he wrote. Its reception was worthy of the work, and worthy of the new aspiration of musicians it awakened. Among others, one most graceful compliment was paid to the composer by the festival committee, in the presentation of a copy of his own score, with illustrations by three of the most eminent painters in Germany. The work was greatly modified before it was printed; ten pieces being omitted, several rewritten, and some inserted. "St. Paul" was first played in England, at a festival in Liverpool, in October, 1836; and it was given in London and at Birmingham (to which latter the composer came to conduct it, bringing with him his Concerto in D minor) in the ensuing September. Very quickly upon this followed its reproduction in every country where the class of music is performed, and the same success always attended it. In the summer of 1836 Mendelssohn went to Frankfort to take the duties of his friend Schelble, who was ill, as conductor of the Cecilia Vocal Society. It was then that his marriage was decided upon with Mlle. Cecilie Jean-Renaud, of a good Frankfort family, which took place in the spring of 1837.
An interesting feature of the year 1838 was a series of four historical concerts, which Mendelssohn organized and directed at Leipsic, and which were as notable for the choice of works as for the refined excellence of their performance. At several subsequent periods he gave a similar course, proving thus his knowledge of the various treasures of his art, and his perfect mastery of their several peculiarities of style. At this time several of his most important chamber compositions were written; the three violin quartets (Op. 44, for example) and the pianoforte Trio in D minor; besides which, many minor works show the exhaustless spontaneity of his invention. In 1840, a monument to Gutenberg was erected in Leipsic, the great book mart of Germany, in commemoration of the fourth centenary of his magnificent discovery. For this occasion Mendelssohn was appointed to write a choral work, which was sung in the open air at the uncovering of the statue, and to compose his immortal Hymn of Praise, which was first performed on the same evening. This latter he purposed to follow with some other works on the same original plan, and so described it as the "first Sinfonia-cantata." Why this purpose was not carried out is unknown; but it was certainly not because this first composition in the new form was unsuccessful. It is not necessary here to discuss, how much or how little the design of incorporating in one work the essentials of an instrumental and of a vocal composition owes its origin to the Choral Symphony of Beethoven. Mendelssohn's detractors may deny him the merit of invention; but they who render him critical justice will always perceive as broad a distinction between his idea and that of his predecessor, as between the plan of Beethoven's work and that of any other
