people's poetry. This, however, must not be understood in the
sense of democratic poetry.

The Polish poets [says C. Courriere, to whose "Histoire de la
litterature chez les Slaves" I am much indebted] ransacked with
avidity the past of their country, which appeared to them so much
the more brilliant because it presented a unique spectacle in the
history of nations. Instead of breaking with the historic
traditions they respected them, and gave them a new lustre, a new
life, by representing them under a more beautiful, more animated,
and more striking form. In short, if Polish romanticism was an
evolution of poetry in the national sense, it did not depart from
the tendencies of its elder sister, for it saw in the past only
the nobility; it was and remained, except in a few instances,
aristocratic.

Now let us keep in mind that this contest of classicism and
romanticism, this turning away from a dead formalism to living
ideals, was taking place at that period of Frederick Chopin's
life when the human mind is most open to new impressions, and
most disposed to entertain bold and noble ideas. And, further,
let us not undervalue the circumstance that he must have come in
close contact with one of the chief actors in this unbloody
revolution.

Frederick spent his first school holidays at Szafarnia, in
Mazovia, the property of the Dziewanowski family. In a letter
written on August 19, 1824, he gives his friend and school-fellow
William Kolberg, some account of his doings there--of his strolls
and runs in the garden, his walks and drives to the forest, and