Brunnen.

Remember JULY 31ST.



163.

DEAR, GREAT MAN,

A thousand thanks for the autograph, which will give much joy.
This Fraulein Soest is a good, excellent girl, who was sent by
her parents to England, and was there taken with home-sickness
for the "Weymar school," "the music of the future," and the
"Wagnerian opera." She managed to escape, and is now settled at
Erfurt, where she gives pianoforte lessons, and from where she
comes to Weymar to hear your poems.

Ten and a hundred thousand thanks for many other things besides.
Liszt was delighted to hear that his articles in the Weymar paper
had pleased you. It is a fine thing of you to have understood
them so well. They are to go on for some time, and the "Flying
Dutchman" will conclude this series. It is truly a wreath of
mourning which he binds there; your dark, noble hero lives, and
will live. Sleep and solitude are not death; and his vital
strength is such, that for a long time to come he will make the
round of Europe at certain intervals. Beethoven's "Fidelio" is
only just becoming acclimatised in London.

I am quite happy that the symphonic poems interest you. When he