of Anton Barcinski, professor at the Polytechnic School, teacher
at Nicholas Chopin's institution, and by-and-by his son-in-law;
Dr. Jarocki, the zoologist; Julius Kolberg, the engineer; and
Brodowski, the painter. These and others, although to us only
names, or little more, are nevertheless not without their
significance. We may liken them to the supernumeraries on the
stage, who, dumb as they are, help to set off and show the
position of the principal figure or figures.

The love of literature which we have noticed in the young
Chopins, more particularly in the sisters, implanted by an
excellent education and fostered by the taste, habits, and
encouragement of their father, cannot but have been greatly
influenced and strengthened by the characters and conversation of
such visitors. Arid let it not be overlooked that this was the
time of Poland's intellectual renascence--a time when the
influence of man over man is greater than at other times, he
being, as it were, charged with a kind of vivifying electricity.
The misfortunes that had passed over Poland had purified and
fortified the nation--breathed into it a new and healthier life.
The change which the country underwent from the middle of the
eighteenth to the earlier part of the nineteenth century was
indeed immense. Then Poland, to use Carlyle's drastic
phraseology, had ripened into a condition of "beautifully
phosphorescent rot-heap"; now, with an improved agriculture,
reviving commerce, and rising industry, it was more prosperous
than it had been for centuries. As regards intellectual matters,
the comparison with the past was even more favourable to the
present. The government that took the helm in 1815 followed the
direction taken by its predecessors, and schools and universities