more idealized! What confident perception of the future powers of
his instrument must have presided over his voluntary renunciation
of an empiricism, so widely spread, that another would have
thought it a mistake, a folly, to have wrested such great
thoughts from their ordinary interpreters! How sincerely should
we revere him for this devotion to the Beautiful for its own
sake, which induced him not to yield to the general propensity to
scatter each light spray of melody over a hundred orchestral
desks, and enabled him to augment the resources of art, in
teaching how they may be concentrated in a more limited space,
elaborated at less expense of means, and condensed in time!

Far from being ambitious of the uproar of an orchestra, Chopin
was satisfied to see his thought integrally produced upon the
ivory of the key-board; succeeding in his aim of losing nothing
in power, without pretending to orchestral effects, or to the
brush of the scene-painter. Oh! we have not yet studied with
sufficient earnestness and attention the designs of his delicate
pencil, habituated as we are, in these days, to consider only
those composers worthy of a great name, who have written at least
half-a-dozen Operas, as many Oratorios, and various Symphonies:
vainly requiring every musician to do every thing, nay, a little
more than every thing. However widely diffused this idea may be,
its justice is, to say the least, highly problematical. We are
far from contesting the glory more difficult of attainment, or
the real superiority of the Epic poets, who display their
splendid creations upon so large a plan; but we desire that
material proportion in music should be estimated by the same
measure which is applied to dimension in other branches of the
fine arts; as, for example, in painting, where a canvas of twenty