as it did of yore. Our illustration shows it exactly as it is
to-day. [See an interesting account of a visit to the cottage
after the fire, in The Musical Times for July 1899.] Schindler
relates that when Beethoven, shortly before his death, was shown
a print of the cottage, sent to him by Diabelli, he remarked:
"Strange that so great a man should have been born in so poor a
home!" Beethoven's relations with Haydn, as we shall see later
on, were at one time somewhat strained; but the years had
softened his asperity, and this indirect tribute to his brother
composer may readily be accepted as a set-off to some things that
the biographer of the greater genius would willingly forget.

A Poor Home

It was indeed a poor home into which Haydn had been born; but
tenderness, piety, thrift and orderliness were there, and
probably the happiest part of his career was that which he spent
in the tiny, dim-lighted rooms within sound of Leitha's waters.

In later life, when his name had been inscribed on the roll of
fame, he looked back to the cottage at Rohrau, "sweet through
strange years," with a kind of mingled pride and pathetic regret.
Flattered by the great and acclaimed by the devotees of his art,
he never felt ashamed of his lowly origin. On the contrary, he
boasted of it. He was proud, as he said, of having "made
something out of nothing." He does not seem to have been often at
Rohrau after he was launched into the world, a stripling not yet
in his teens. But he retained a fond memory of his birthplace.
When in 1795 he was invited to inspect a monument erected to his
honour in the grounds of Castle Rohrau, he knelt down on the