into a stream, where a strange roaring and rushing is heard, but above
which loftier tones resound with magic and exciting power. For a peculiar
life breathes in these lines; an under-current runs through their
apparently unconnected import, uniting them as with an electric chain, and
with firmer links than any mere coherence of subjects could have effected.
I experienced this myself, to the most remarkable degree, when I first made
the attempt to arrange, in accordance with their period and substance, the
hundreds of individual pages bearing neither date nor address, and I was
soon convinced that a connecting text (such as Mozart's Letters have, and
ought to have) would be here entirely superfluous, as even the best
biographical commentary would be very dry work, interrupting the electric
current of the whole, and thus destroying its peculiar effect.

And now, what is this spirit which, for an intelligent mind, binds together
these scattered fragments into a whole, and what is its actual power? I
cannot tell; but I feel to this day just as I felt to the innermost depths
of my heart in the days of my youth when I first heard a symphony of
Beethoven's,--that a spirit breathes from it bearing us aloft with giant
power out of the oppressive atmosphere of sense, stirring to its inmost
recesses the heart of man, bringing him to the full consciousness of his
loftier being, and of the undying within him. And even more distinctly than
when a new world was thus disclosed to his youthful feelings is the _man_
fully conscious that not only was this a new world to him, but a new world
of feeling in itself, revealing to the spirit phases of its own, which,
till Beethoven appeared, had never before been fathomed. Call it by what
name you will, when one of the great works of the sublime master is heard,
whether indicative of proud self-consciousness, freedom, spring, love,
storm, or battle, it grasps the soul with singular force, and enlarges the
laboring breast. Whether a man understands music or not, every one who has
a heart beating within his breast will feel with enchantment that here is