for example, could be more admirable than this description of Mozart?

His artistic nature was as the unruffled surface of
a clear watery mirror to which the lovely blossom of
Italian music inclined to see, to know, to love itself
therein. It was but the surface of a deep and infinite
sea of longing and desire rising from fathomless depths
to gain form and beauty from the gentle greeting of the
lovely flower bending, as if thirsting to discover
in him the secret of its own nature.[8]

Could any words give more concisely the peculiar character of the much
misunderstood Mozart, "the most delicate genius of light and love,"
"the most richly gifted of all musicians"? Does it not tell us more
than all the outpourings of Oulibichef?

[Footnote 8: _Ges. Schr._ (1872), iii. p. 304.]

Or this, in speaking of the formation of the opera and the demand for
better libretti after the period of Spontini?

The poet was ashamed to offer his master wooden
hobbies when he was able to mount a real steed and
knew quite well how to handle the bridle, to guide
the steed hither and thither in the well-trodden
riding-school of the opera. Without this musical
bridle neither musician nor poet would have dared to
mount him lest he should leap high over all the fences
away into his own wild and beautiful home in nature
itself.[9]