works the letters are necessarily not only very imperfectly
given, but in some parts so fragmentary, that the peculiar charm
of this correspondence--namely, the familiar and confidential
mood in which it was written at the time--is entirely destroyed.
It was only possible to restore, and to enable others to enjoy
this charm--a charm so novel, even to those already conversant
with Mozart's life, that the most familiar incidents acquire
fresh zest from it--by an ungarbled edition of these letters.
This is what I now offer, feeling convinced that it will be
welcome not only to the mass of Mozart's admirers, but also to
professional musicians; for in them alone is strikingly set forth
how Mozart lived and labored, enjoyed and suffered, and this with
a degree of vivid and graphic reality which no biography, however
complete, could ever succeed in giving. Who does not know the
varied riches of Mozart's life? All that agitated the minds of
men in that day--nay, all that now moves, and ever will move, the
heart of man--vibrated with fresh pulsation, and under the most
manifold forms, in his sensitive soul, and mirrored itself in a
series of letters, which indeed rather resemble a journal than a
correspondence.

This artist, Nature had gifted in all respects with the most
clear and vigorous intellect that ever man possessed. Even in a
language which he had not so fully mastered as to acquire the
facility of giving expression to his ideas, he contrived to
relate to others all that he saw and heard, and felt and thought,
with surprising clearness and the most charming sprightliness,
combined with talent and good feeling. Above all, in his letters
to his father when travelling, we meet with the most minute
delineations of countries and people, of the progress of the fine