of Priam, the frenzy of Hecuba, the despair of the Trojan
captives. A sublime faith destroying in the survivors of this
Christian Ilion the bitterness of anguish and the cowardice of
despair, their sorrow is no longer marked by earthly weakness.
Raising itself from the soil wet with blood and tears, it springs
forward to implore God; and, having nothing more to hope from
earth, it supplicates the Supreme Judge with prayers so poignant,
that our hearts, in listening, break under the weight of an
august compassion! It would be a mistake to suppose that all the
compositions of Chopin are deprived of the feelings which he has
deemed best to suppress in this great work. Not so. Perhaps human
nature is not capable of maintaining always this mood of
energetic abnegation, of courageous submission. We meet with
breathings of stifled rage, of suppressed anger, in many passages
of his writings: and many of his Studies, as well as his
Scherzos, depict a concentrated exasperation and despair, which
are sometimes manifested in bitter irony, sometimes in intolerant
hauteur. These dark apostrophes of his muse have attracted less
attention, have been less fully understood, than his poems of
more tender coloring. The personal character of Chopin had
something to do with this general misconception. Kind, courteous,
and affable, of tranquil and almost joyous manners, he would not
suffer the secret convulsions which agitated him to be even
suspected.

His character was indeed not easily understood. A thousand subtle
shades, mingling, crossing, contradicting and disguising each
other, rendered it almost undecipherable at a first view. As is
usually the case with the Sclaves, it was difficult to read the
recesses of his mind. With them, loyalty and candor, familiarity