freedom. We believe he offered violence to the character of his
genius whenever he sought to subject it to rules, to
classifications, to regulations not his own, and which he could
not force into harmony with the exactions of his own mind. He was
one of those original beings, whose graces are only fully
displayed when they have cut themselves adrift from all bondage,
and float on at their own wild will, swayed only by the ever
undulating impulses of their own mobile natures.

He was, perhaps, induced to desire this double success through
the example of his friend, Mickiewicz, who, having been the first
to gift his country with romantic poetry, forming a school in
Sclavic literature by the publication of his Dziady, and his
romantic Ballads, as early as 1818, proved afterwards, by the
publication at his Grazyna and Wallenrod, that he could triumph
over the difficulties that classic restrictions oppose to
inspiration, and that, when holding the classic lyre of the
ancient poets, he was still master. In making analogous attempts,
we do not think Chopin has been equally successful. He could not
retain, within the square of an angular and rigid mould, that
floating and indeterminate contour which so fascinates us in his
graceful conceptions. He could not introduce in its unyielding
lines that shadowy and sketchy indecision, which, disguising the
skeleton, the whole frame-work of form, drapes it in the mist of
floating vapors, such as surround the white-bosomed maids of
Ossian, when they permit mortals to catch some vague, yet lovely
outline, from their home in the changing, drifting, blinding
clouds.

Some of these efforts, however, are resplendent with a rare