should like much to try his hand in a work of that character, as the elevated and the pathetic in church music was his favourite style. She advised him to accept the engagement; and he accordingly wrote an answer, stating his terms for the composition, excusing himself from naming the precise time of its completion, but desiring to know where it should be sent when finished. In a few days the messenger returned, paid twenty-five ducats, half the price required, in advance, and informed the composer that as his demand was so moderate, he might expect a considerable present on completing the score. He was to follow the bent of his own genius in the work, but to give himself no trouble to discover who employed him, as it would be in vain."

While occupied on the work, he removed to Prague, where he produced the opera of "La Clemenza di Tito," and then returned to Vienna, at which capital good fortune seemed at last to await him. He produced the opera of "Die Zauberflöte" with signal success, and was appointed kapellmeister of the cathedral of St. Stephen's. But the catastrophe of the drama of his life was inevitable. In the words of Mr. Holmes, "the prospects of worldly happiness were now phantoms that only came to mock his helplessness, and embitter his parting hour":

"With the Requiem' his former illness returned. About the 21st of November, his hands and feet began to swell, he was seized with sudden sickness, and an almost total incapacity of motion. In this state he was removed to the bed from which he never rose again. During the fourteen days in which he lay thus, his intellectual faculties remained unimpaired; he had a strong desire for life, though little expectation of it, and his behaviour was generally tranquil and resigned. But sometimes the singular concurrence of events at this juncture, and the thought of the unprotected condition of his wife and children overpowered him, and he could not restrain passionate lamentations. Now must I go,' he would exclaim, 'just as I should be able to live in peace-now leave my art when, no longer the slave of fashion, nor the tool of speculators, I could follow the dictates of my own feeling, and write whatever my heart prompts. I must leave my family-my poor children, at the very instant in which I should have been

able to provide for their welfare!' Sometimes he spoke more cheerfully. His sister-in-law Sophie, who visited him daily, and did all that affectionate attention could suggest to alleviate his sufferings, found him on the day before his death apparently much improvedhoping for, and even anticipating, recovery. He now sent a message to Madame Weber-Tell mamma that I am getting better, and that I shall come during the octave of her fête day to wish her joy.' This was followed by a fearful night, in which his attendants were in momentary apprehension of his dissolution.

"At two o'clock on the same day, which was that of his death, he had been visited by some performers of Schickaneder's theatre, his intimate friends. The ruling passion was now strongly exemplified. He desired the score of the Requiem' to be brought, and it was sung by his visiters round his bed himself taking the alto part. Schack sang the soprano, Hofer, his brother-in-law, the tenor, and Gorl, the bass. They had proceeded as far as the first bars of the Lachrymosa, when Mozart was seized with a violent fit of weeping, and the score was put aside. Throughout this day he was possessed with a strong presentiment of the near approach of death, and now gave himself up, relinquishing every hope that he had hitherto occasionally cherished.

"It was late in the evening of Decemturned, but only to witness his dissoluber 5, 1791, that his sister-in-law retion. She had left him so much better, that she did not hasten to him. Her own account may now be given. 'How shocked was I, when my sister, usually 80 calm and self-possessed, met me at the door, and in a half-distracted manner said, 'God be thanked that you are here. Since you left he has been so ill that I never expected him to outlive this day. Should he be so again he will die to-night. Go to him, and see how he is.'

As I approached his bed he called to me- It is well that you are here: you must stay to-night and see me die.' I tried, as far as I was able, to banish this impression, but he replied, "The taste of death is already on my tongue -I taste death; and who will be near to support my Constance, if you go away?' I returned to my mother for a few moments to give her intelligence, for she was anxiously waiting, as she might else have supposed the fatal event already over; and then hurried back to my disconsolate sister. Sussmayer was standing by the bedside, and on the counterpane lay the Requiem' concerning which Mozart was still speaking and giving directions. He now called

his wife, and made her promise to keep his death secret for a time from every one but Albrechtsberger, that he might thus have an advantage over other candidates for the vacant office of kapellmeister to St. Stephen's. His desire in this respect was gratified, for Albrechtsberger received the appointment. As he looked over the pages of the 'Requiem' for the last time, he said, 'Did Í not tell you that I was writing this for myself?'

"On the arrival of the physician, Dr. Closset, cold applications were ordered to his burning head, a process endured by the patient with extreme shuddering, and which brought on the delirium from which he never recovered. He remained in this state for two hours, and at midnight expired."

Thus died Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, "the Prodigy of Salzburg," at the age of thirty-five years and ten months. The closing scene of his short life is cheerless in more respects than one. The case forms, indeed, one of the very few instances within our recollection, of a mind, thoroughly imbued in early years, with devotional principles utterly rejecting in its last hour the blessings of spiritual consolation. And, in the silence of the biographer, we may venture to surmise that the intimacy recorded as having existed between the composer and the infidel Grimm, involving, no doubt, an acquaintance with the elite of the freethinking party in France, may have produced its effect in loosening

the foundation of the

musician's

belief; in which case we can the easier account for the relaxation of his morals, perceptible first about the time that acquaintance commenced. What a solemn train of reflection does this open to us! and in what a fearful light does the responsibility of that philosopher appear, whose influence is found, in after years, to have sapped subterraneously out of him, undermining the everlasting hopes not only of his admitted disciples, but of those whom he appears only to have meant to befriend-so true is it that even "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." To moralize, however, is neither our province nor our wish, though there is certainly matter here to ponder over. Perhaps the few closing words of the book itself are more appropriate in their simplicity than we could

use:

"All the intimate friends and connexions of Mozart are now removed; but the works of the composer, in various modes of republication, or first printed from the MSS., are, at the distance of half a century, continually springing into life. This is the fame he sought with the most earnest devotion and self sacrifice. Estimated by the universality of his power-the rapidity of his production, and its permanent influence on art, the models he created, and the constantly advancing march of his genius, arrested in full career, and in the bloom of life, Mozart certainly stands alone among musicians."

OLD LETTERS!-Who could ever hope to do justice to a theme so pregnant with gentle and beautiful associations -so full of smiles and tears, strangely mingled together, and coming home, as it must needs do, more or less, to every one of our readers; for who has not a store of such ?-silent mementos of the past!

The honour of the invention of letter-writing, after much disputation and careful research into the subject, is now generally accorded to Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, an empress in whose reign, posts, which are universally admitted to be of Persian origin, were first brought into special use. Her name well deserves to have been written in characters of gold. It would appear that the letters of our Saxon ancestors consisted, for the most part, of rude tablets of wood, covered with wax, upon which the mystical lines were carefully inscribed. A love-letter must have been a formi. dable thing in those days, or, to say the least of it, extremely inconvenient, and the burning of them in any quantity, and every one knows how such things are apt to accumulate, almost have amounted to an act of incendiarism.

It is curious to notice in our own time, the various classes into which letters may be divided, together with the distinctive and individual marks by which we may at once distinguish them, The delicately tinted note paper and perfumed wax, together with an exquisite nicety of folding, and "touch-me-not" air, contains, ten to one, an invitation; or is sure to come only from some recently made acquaintance, friends do not stand upon such ceremony with each other. They are, however, occasionally exchanged between young ladies"dear friends,” as they term them

N. H. M.

selves; or forwarded to such by a certain class of the opposite sex, who are said to write in kid gloves, and use nothing but silver pens. In contrast to this is the commonplace-looking epistles, which, whether flung down the area steps, thrust under the street door, or sent through the more refined medium of the penny-post, cannot fail with its round, text-hand and wafered envelope, to be immediately recognized for a circular-or a bill.

Then comes the well-known superscription. We could distinguish it at a glance among ten thousand! -oftentimes half illegible from haste. For the life of us we could not tell what sort of paper it is written upon, the first most likely that came to hand; or what the seal was which we tore away in our hurry to get at the contents-but only that the reception of such always makes us happy. These are the letters of real friends-the outpourings of loving and understanding hearts! Next we have the business letter, looking stiff and solemn enough, and distinguished in general by an initial letter or crest-every one has a crest now-a-days. And last not least, a peculiar class of epistles, full of a strange mystery, incomprehensible to all but the initiated, and sealed with some such mystical sentence as the following:-"Forget-menot, Though lost to sight to memory dear," "Go where I wish to be," "Dinna forget," and many others. If, in addition to these matters, and not far off, a few tiny drops of wax should be observed, having fallen there quite by accident of course, and significantly termed "kisses," there can no longer remain any doubt about the matter we may be sure that they are love-letters! And it is astonishing the infinite number of such, daily

66

passing and re-passing, like winged messengers of brighter things to this every-day world.

Letters may be called the connecting-links between several householdsthe solace of absent friends and lovers. First, a letter from home-how sweet to the exile-to the world weariedto the sick and pining heart. How it brings back old times, and faces, and the memory of kind voices to cheer us on our lonely pilgrimage. Every now and then we come to a word blotted, and half illegible, as though a tear had fallen there, while our own flow fast and soothingly. Little, trivial records, or what seem such to the eye of a stranger, have for us a deep and all-absorbing interest. A word will oftentimes bring back a whole gush of tender recollections. "You remember so and so?" To be sure!

-can we ever forget? And then follows that they are married-or dead! And we close our eyes, and dream of them as they were in the merry days of "Auld lang syne," awaking from our reverie with a smile, or a sigh, as the case may be. Oh! we are all changed since then.

Sur

It is strange, as years roll on, how the different members of a once attached family become separated, while these links of love serve to keep them still one in heart. Letters defy time and space, and pass over land and sea to compass their great end-the preserving alive of household sympathies and affections. The daughter-the sister marries, and finds another home, it may be far away. rounded by new friends and faces, the yearning for that which she has quitted would most likely soon die out but for such memorials. We heard tell once of a young artist, whose name, had it pleased Heaven to spare him, would have been known long ere this not only to his native land, but to the world, who, having achieved some great triumph for which he had been toiling hard, was asked by a fellowstudent if he did not feel quite happy

assurance that we can still write to one another that we shall not be quite desolate, but can tell each other all our little trials and troubles, asking counsel and assistance as of old. "If," says Seneca, "the pictures of our absent friends are agreeable to us, which revive the remembrance of them, and soften the regret occasioned by their absence, by a solace that is unsubstantial and delusive, how much more delightful are letters, which bring before us their very footstepsthe very impressions and traces of their characters. Whatever is sweet in the aspect of those we love, is in a manner realized in a letter by the very impression of their hands." Who has not felt happier all the day afterwards, from the mere reception of a letter. Ay, and better, for there is oftentimes a strange spell in them to calm, and purify, and make us worthier of the writer's high ideal of the many imaginary perfections which absence and kind affection are so apt to gift us with in their eyes. They are full of an elevating power-a subduing tenderness-speaking in whispers unheard by other ears-revealings of the inmost spirit, laid bare to us in all confidence and trust-hallowed things, too precious for the glance of a stranger -beginning in endearment, and ending with a sweet blessing that stands recorded for us as often as we gaze back upon it, and is surely something more than mere words.

Who has not fancied, in seasons of sadness and disappointment, of depression and mistrust, (for the strongest affection will not always enable us to rise superior to these mysterious ebbs and flows of the human heart), a sort of fear-an undefined misgiving-arising, perhaps, from the veriest trifles, the delay of a few days in the expected missive, or something else equally causeless, that the writer must needs be displeased with us, we cannot tell for what, or how it came about, or why we should think so just now. A feeling of estrangement, a weary sadness creeps over us. "Is it always thus?" is the wild, eager questioning of our stricken spirits. "Is friendship, indeed, but a name?—And after all that we once promised to be to one another !"

We would give anything in the world at such times for a line only;

and yet when it comes we tremblewilfully prolonging that self-torment which a word, the very first word, would dissipate in a moment, for ten to one it begins just as usual, and is kinder by half than we deserve. Then we weep and laugh aloud; feeling so strong in our renewed happiness that for the next week or two it would take very much to overset our equanimity. Sometimes, but not always, we confess our weakness, and they forgive, and laugh, too, or chide us gently for such idle misgivings, while we make a thousand promises to them, and our own hearts, never to doubt again, let what will happen!

The third class-love-letters-we can do little more than glance at, leaving our gentle task to those who have had more experience in such subjects. But we can fancy them like certain talismans, of which we have somewhere heard or read, losing all charm the very instant they pass into the keeping of any but that one, for whom the spell was originally designed. The few that ever came under our notice, only excites a marvellous inclination to laugh; but we suppose it is no laughing matter in reality.

Bassompiere tells us in his Memoirs "cet illustre Bassompiere!" as Madame de Montpensier terms him, that the day before he was arrested by order of Richelieu, and sent to the Bastille, he burned upwards of six thousand loveletters! But we doubt if they were real love-letters; and cannot help wishing that a new term could be coined to distinguish and define this peculiar branch of correspondence. "Methinks," as Shelley beautifully ob

serves

"This word of love is fit for all the world,

And, that for gentle hearts, another name Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns."

It strikes us that, connected with this part of our subject, the very saddest thing of all must be to return such, and receive in exchange the unrequited out-pourings of a heart that can have little more to do in this world but break! And yet these things are common enough: lovers quarrel and separate, each demanding back all the letters and presents that ever passed between them. Well, it is right, perhaps; pride is satisfied, and no me

morial remains to remind them of the past.

It once happened thus with a young girl, whom we shall call Isabel-poor Isabel! it was a marvel how she could ever quarrel with any one, and she never did exactly, but she was proud and wilful, and he passionate and unjust. How easily everything might have been explained at the time; and would have been no doubt, had they been left to themselves, for they still loved one another; but friends stepped between and severed them so effectually that estrangement ended at length in separation. What could she do, a woman? Nothing when the hour of reconciliation has once passed-nothing but be still, and die! And yet they told him, these friends, that she seemed merrier, and more animated than ever-seemed!

Well, the affair terminated, as we have said, in a separation. And now it only remained to send back the last links that bound them to each other. Isabel had long since ceased to wear any of those little trinkets of which she was once so proud, restoring them to their glittering casket with scarcely a sigh-their glory had passed away in her eyes for ever! But the lettershis letters!-oh, how could she bear to part with them? "My dearest Isabel !"-most of them commenced thus-and what a mockery-how like a dream it seemed now-and yet she would fain have dreamt on. Poor girl, the struggle ended at length by her preserving one-just one little one to comfort her he would never know -never miss it-how should he? And it would be such a consolation in her bereavement ! The rest were sent back and burned that same night by the angry and disappointed lover-oh, he little thought! But she told him everything afterwards-years afterwards, for they were finally reconciled and married-confessing with mingled tears and smiles how often she used to steal away, when she fancied herself unnoticed, and kiss and weep over her treasure. It was more than he deserved for his cold mistrust at the time; and he felt it, all the deeper, perhaps, that Isabel persisted in taking the blame entirely to herself. No doubt there were faults on both sides; but at any rate it proved to be their first and last quarrel.

Miss Martineau tells us, that Dod