ing his former success, his application to the court for an appointment, was dismissed with cold excuses; and at Augsburg, infinitely as he delighted the best judges by his performances on the pianoforte and organ, when he gave a concert, he scarcely cleared its cost. At Mannheim, a new world was open to him, in the acquaintance of Wieland and other of the most eminent masters of German literature; and he formed the idea that he might advance his art and honour his country, were he to set a German opera, of which one of these great men would supply the text. Anxiously as he strove for the accomplishment of this design, he strove in vain; and his stay at Mannheim offering him no prospect of employment, it became necessary that he should resume his journey before his small means were exhausted. Nevertheless, he showed the strongest disinclination to leave the place, and repeatedly deferred his departure. The explanation of this anomalous conduct was made at length in a letter to his father, acknowledging his love for Aloysia Weber, the daughter of a poor music copyist and prompter, a girl of fifteen, possessing a remarkable voice and great talent for singing. Mozart conceived the wild scheme of travelling to Italy with the Webers, where he fancied Aloysia and himself would both find a career open to them; but his father saw no likelihood of success in the project, and felt the repugnance, natural to his reserved character against the connection; he therefore urged, with his utmost vehemence, Wolfgang's immediately setting out for Paris; and the lovers parted with mutual assurances of eternal constancy. Mozart left Mannheim in March; but a very different fortune now awaited him in the French capital, from that which greeted him when he appeared there as a child. Persons could be amused by, if they could not appreciate, the prodigious performances of the boy of eight years old; but the sterling merit of the matured artist of two-and-twenty taxed their powers of perception to an inconvenient extent, and their responsibility of opinion to a greater extent than they chose to incur; even the Baron von Grimm, whose introductions were of value to him before, though he now proved himself a friend by rendering him pecuniary assistance, was of no service in furthering his artistic interest. He obtained recommendations to the influential, but was kept waiting in their anterooms, and was wearied and irritated by their broken promises and their unrecognition of his ability. A better courtier might have turned to useful account opportunities that Mozart allowed to pass him; especially the acquaintance of the Duke de Guines, a flutist, to whose daughter, a harpist, he gave daily lessons in composition; but he seems to have resented the illiberality of this patron, and illiberal patrons brook not resentment. He wrote successively for the Concerts Spirituel a choral work (a Miserere), a concertante, and a symphony; a portion only of the first of which was performed, the second was wholly withheld, and the last was given in July, with distinguished applause. On the 3d of this month, the death of his mother plunged Mozart into deep affliction, and incapacitated him to enjoy the success of his symphony so short a time afterwards. He built much upon the interest of Noverre, the ballet-master, to procure him the text of an opera; but while he had constantly to furnish the man of steps with dance tunes to keep his interest alive, this interest was never exerted in his favour. One, and one only advantage, Mozart derived from his disappointing sojourn at Paris—the experience of the great controversy between the German and Italian schools of dramatic music, conducted by the partisans of Gluck and Piccini, then raging at its height—an experience which must have made him sensitive to the merits of both, and which must have had a deep effect in perfecting his own views of dramatic art. The cathedral organist and the kapellmeister of Saltzburg both died while Mozart was away; it was not without exercise of the diplomatic address which marked all his movements, that the father was able to obtain the present grant of the first office for his son, and the promise of the kapelhneistership, for which he was deemed too young, but which was to be reserved for him. Having gained these important points, he commanded Wolfgang's immediate return. Mozart's dislike to resume the old life of Saltzburg, was somewhat mitigated by the provision in his engagement, that he should have leave of absence, to fulfil any contract he might obtain to write an opera for another town; and further, by his father's lively representation, that the salary he was now to receive was indispensable to relieve the family from the embarrassment in which the affairs of recent years had involved them. Though he set off homewards, however, he could not leave behind him his reluctance to reach the distasteful place; and he took advantage of any pretext for lingering on the road. At Mannheim, he strained every energy to procure some fixed appointment; and he began the composition of a monodrama, called "Semiramis," in the form of those of Benda, consisting of spoken declamation accompanied after the manner of recitative; but he could not procure its performance. The Webers had removed to Munich, which was, of course, reason sufficient for his taking this city in his route; he wrote a grand aria for Aloysia, to display the specialities of her voice and style, and went to her, all confident in the warmth of his reception. When he entered the room, the fickle fair one feigned not to know him. Stung, but not cast down by this treatment, he went to the pianoforte and sang with careless accent, "I quit the girl gladly who cares not for me," and departed the house, leaving her a stranger to the undercurrent of his true emotions.
He reached Saltzburg, and entered on his new duties there, in January, 1779. During the next two years, he wrote very extensively for the church, and composed also the opera of "Zaïde," first published in 1838. With extreme joy, he accepted a commission to write an opera for production on the elector's birthday, at Munich, in January 29, 1781. This remarkable composition, an enormous advance upon all that had preceded it, was "Idomeneo," in which we have to admire the wonderful dramatic power, and the first manifestation of the art of orchestral colouring, which owes its origin and its perfection to Mozart. It was completed with immense rapidity, rehearsed with enthusiasm, and produced with triumph. What must have been the rapture of the experienced father, who had procured leave to witness the first performance, at hearing this new application of the art, whose extreme resources he believed he had fathomed, what his exultation at knowing his darling son and his pupil to be the author of the universal delight which expressed itself around him! Mozart drew hopes from this success, that his long unpropitious fortune might change, and he sent for some of his masses from Saltzburg, and composed an offertory, a Kyrie, and a serenade for wind instruments, believing that such proofs of his readiness, appearing at a time when general opinion was favourable to him, might lead to his obtaining some appointment which would enable him to resign the one he held under the archbishop; but these hopes, like many others his sanguine temper had conjured up, waned in the reality of this appointment. He was obliged to leave Munich by an order to attend his patron at Vienna, where he arrived March 16, 1781. Henceforth the Austrian capital was his abode, the place above all others best suited for the gratification of his personal and social wants, best stated for the exercise of his genius; and though the circumstances were uncongenial, which now forced his appearance in the city where the brightest portion of his career was to be accomplished, it was not long before he freed himself from their restraint. In the palace of the archbishop, Mozart was compelled to dine with the cooks and lackeys, and when required to exercise his talent before the guests of his patron, was called upon as though this were the duty of a menial, instead of the function of an artist. Such indignities galled him beyond his capacity of endurance, and he protested to the archbishop against the unbecoming treatment he experienced, who retorted that he might always leave what he did not love, but must not complain of what he held, and accordingly the cathedral organist and kapellmeister murmured no more, but resigned his offices at the beginning of May. The moment of his enfranchisement was unlucky, insomuch as it occurred during the season when the fashionable world was absent from Vienna, and a chance of obtaining pupils was consequently very slender, and yet Mozart had no other resource. Matters, however, improved for him, when in August he was engaged to write the "Entführung aus dem Serail." This commission owed its origin to the emperor's weariness of the long succession of Italian operas that monopolized the court theatre, and his desire for such change as the setting of a German libretto might present. The novelty of the task was alone enough to make it seem difficult, but Mozart, whose desire to write for the stage was unconscious of an obstacle, eagerly undertook while others considered, and the duty of composing the German opera was consequently confided to him. Many accidents procrastinated the performance of the work, until July 12, 1782, when it was given with entire success. The composer's faculty of creating character is notably evidenced in this opera, in which Osmin, the gardener, is as perfect an indi-
