These letters of the romantic tone-poet to a friend and fellow- artist will probably take the reader by surprise, nay, may even disillusionise him. Their matter is indeed very suggestive of a commercial man writing to one of his agents. Nor is this feature, as the sequel will show, peculiar to the letters just quoted. Trafficking takes up a very large part of Chopin's Parisian correspondence; [FOOTNOTE: I indicate by this phrase comprehensively the whole correspondence since his settling in the French capital, whether written there or elsewhere.] of the ideal within him that made him what he was as an artist we catch, if any, only rare glimmerings and glimpses.

CHAPTER XXV.

TWO PUBLIC CONCERTS, ONE IN 1841 AND ANOTHER IN 1842. --CHOPIN'S STYLE OF PLAYING: TECHNICAL QUALITIES; FAVOURABLE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS; VOLUME OF TONE; USE OF THE PEDALS; SPIRITUAL QUALITIES; TEMPO RUBATO; INSTRUMENTS.--HIS MUSICAL SYMPATHIES AND ANTIPATHIES.--OPINIONS ON MUSIC AND MUSICIANS.

The concert which Chopin gave in 1841, after several years of retirement, took place at Pleyel's rooms on Monday, the 26th of April. It was like his subsequent concerts a semi-public rather than a public one, for the audience consisted of a select circle of pupils, friends, and partisans who, as Chopin told Lenz, took the tickets in advance and divided them among themselves. As most of the pupils belonged to the aristocracy, it followed as a matter of course that the concert was emphatically what Liszt calls it, "un concert de fashion." The three chief musical papers of Paris: the "Gazette Musicale," the "France Musicale," and the "Menestrel" were unanimous in their high, unqualified praise of the concert-giver, "the king of the fete, who was overwhelmed with bravos." The pianoforte performances of Chopin took up by far the greater part of the programme, which was varied by two arias from Adam's "La Rose de Peronne," sung by Mdme. Damoreau-- Cinti, who was as usual "ravissante de perfection," and by Ernst's "Elegie," played by the composer himself "in a grand style, with passionate feeling and a purity worthy of the great masters." Escudier, the writer of the notice in the "France Musicale," says of Ernst's playing: "If you wish to hear the violin weep, go and hear Ernst; he produces such heart-rending, such passionate sounds, that you fear every moment to see his instrument break to pieces in his hands. It is difficult to carry farther the expression of sadness, of suffering, and of despair."