seems to us now a figure of a very remote past, so great have
been the changes in the world of music since he lived. But his
name will always be read in the golden book of classical music;
and whatever the evolutionary processes of the art may bring, the
time can hardly come when he will be forgotten, his works
unheard.

Rohrau

Franz Joseph Haydn was born at the little market-town of Rohrau,
near Prugg, on the confines of Austria and Hungary, some
two-and-a-half hours' railway journey from Vienna. The Leitha,
which flows along the frontier of Lower Austria and Hungary on
its way to the Danube, runs near, and the district

[Figure: Haydn's birth-house at Rohrau]

is flat and marshy. The house in which the composer was born had
been built by his father. Situated at the end of the market-place,
it was in frequent danger from inundation; and although it stood
in Haydn's time with nothing worse befalling it than a flooding
now and again, it has twice since been swept away, first in 1813,
fours years after Haydn's death, and again in 1833. It was
carefully rebuilt on each occasion, and still stands for the
curious to see--a low-roofed cottage, very much as it was when
the composer of "The Creation" first began to be "that various
thing called man." A fire unhappily did some damage to the
building in 1899. But excepting that the picturesque thatched
roof has given place to a covering of less inflammable material,
the "Zum Haydn" presents its extensive frontage to the road, just