Whether the theory of the influences of Austrian life and society upon the well-being and the well-doing of the musician and his art, indicated in the foregoing pages, be overstrained, or the reverse, it receives further illustration in the story of the last of the classical composers of Vienna, who lived, died, and was buried, comparatively unknown, in the midst of a world unworthy of him.–For a genius that–while Beethoven was existing, and where Rossini was reigning–could strike out a path for itself so original as Schubert's, amounts to a phenomenon rare in the annals of Music, meriting kind entertainment in a city the music of which has been so long its boast. How far fortune followed desert, may be gathered from a brief memoir of Schubert by Herr Bauernfeld, on the leading facts contained in which we may dwell for a moment.

Francis Schubert was born in the Lichtenthal suburb of Vienna, on the last day of January, 1797. His father was in the humble circumstances of a schoolmaster; but the German instructor of boys must command some musical acquirement, and Father Schubert was able to teach Francis the rudiments of music and the violin, while an elder brother instructed the child on the pianoforte.

In nothing is the difference between home and foreign arrangements more striking than in the quantity of entertainment deemed fashionable and sufficient. Talk of the English as lukewarm in the matter of public amusements! Where else shall we find audiences willing to be shut up in the strait seats of a theatre, or the cramping benches of an opera pit, from seven o'clock in the evening till an hour past midnight? Where else, frames robust enough to endure, as at our provincial festivals, four hours of oratorio in the morning, and five hours of concert in the evening, with all the intermediate hurries and cares attendant on the pleasure?

I was sitting on the second morning revolving our incessant habits in my mind, and rejoicing in the rationality of a few hours' pause, when Dr. Mendelssohn kindly paid me a visit. There were some MSS. of Sebastian Bach to be inspected ; there was to be organ-playing in the Cathedral: in short, it was to be one of those mornings of musical lounging and luxury, which, as regards real enjoyment of, and insight into, the art, are sometimes worth a score of formal performances. Once again the friendly hospitality must be dwelt upon which included in these choice pleasures a total stranger, without his being allowed for a single instant, to feel himself tolerated or de trop.

I liked Dresden even better in 1840 than in 1839. The weather was brighter—the town seemed more tranquilly engaging; and the pictures in the Gallery had taken the look of old familiar friends.—Dresden, too, was doomed to be a place of musical compensation to me for failures and disappointments encountered elsewhere. The repayment for Berlin shortcomings, which, in 1839,1 found in my first introduction to “Euryanthe,” took, in 1840, a form more precious— if that could be—because more unique, by bringing me acquainted with the consummate organ-playing of Herr Schneider.

I will not libel any musician by asking him if he be fond of the instrument. The further removed he be from personality in his preferences of Art—the more devotedly addicted to Thought in its noblest, if not most excursive, flights—the more exquisitely will he relish, the more eagerly will he return to those grave and sublime pleasures—to those oracular utterances, as it were, in which musical Truth and Poetry, of the highest order, make themselves known. After a London season of fever and competition and excitement, when the newest wonder-player has been hardly heard before he has been pushed off his stool of popularity by the newest singer— when one strain of music has been hurried out of the memory by some other of a more seizing piquancy,—to find in the midst of the comparative quiet of a German town, and the yet more modest tranquillity of an occupied but not a dazzling career, an instrumentalist who, in his way, might challenge the Liszts and the Paganinis of his century,—was as great a gratification to the mind as his artistic exhibitions were a delight to the ear.

During the three hours of sleep allowed me, old remembrances and new impressions combined themselves into such a whimsically distinct mosaic, that the transcript of the same would possibly not be the dullest page of these journals. But, according to Dr Watts, the telling of dreams is the sluggard's occupation, and in the Harz country at least few deserve that character. At five o'clock the inmates of the Brockenhaus were all shaken out of their heavy sleep, to be in time for the far-famed sunrise. One by one the spirits of the last night's orgie made their appearance, looking neither much dirtier nor more debauched for the carouse than they had done the previous evening, and alertly eager for the spectacle they had mounted to see. It was soon evident, however, that of this they were to be disappointed. The aspect of matters on issuing forth reminded me of a graphic expression in Mr. Monck Mason's account of the ascent of the great Nassau balloon, which he described as at midnight silently cleaving its way through black marble. No less dense and substantial seemed the dingy white fog in the heart of which the summit of the Brocken was embedded, and which only gave way a span's breadth before us. Having blundered all round the Prospect Tower ere we came to the door of entrance, we mounted to the summit.

For another of the far famed diversions of Vienna, we were just in time: or we may be said to have seen it in its dying state, rather than to have partaken of it. I allude to those faëry extravaganzas of Italian origin, which long made the theatres of the suburbs famous; and in which the Austrian Harlequin, Columbine, and Pantaloon, so many a day contrived to keep the public alive, and to say and to do as many absurd things beyond the bounds of license as a paternal censorship could bear. I was one among some forty people who, in the Leopoldstadt Theatre, solemnly sat through “Der Diamant des Geister Königs”–which, once upon a time, had drawn thither thousands to applaud its broad pantaloonery and pleasant satire.

Sooth to say, the piece, in which the local jokes were lost on me, would have stirred speculation, more than broad mirth, had the theatre been crammed in place of being cavernously empty. It was noticeable, for instance, to observe what things the very same censorship that had allowed Liszt to play, but not to publish, the Rakoczy march (a Hungarian patriotic measure), that had dealt so mercilessly with some of the noble sentiments in Schiller's “Wallenstein” at the Court Theatre—allowed the Pasquins of the Leopoldstadt Theatre to present.

Some of my most sunny musical days, have been those spent in the Rhine land.

It has now become, if not positively difficult, “uneasy” (as the Germans put it) to say a good word for the great river, and the district it traverses. Familiarity has bred contempt for the Drachenfels and Ehrenbreitstein and Loreley's rock and Bishop Hatto's tower. Yet the Rhine is not disenchanted, save to those whose exquisite dread of what is common-place and Cockney, merely proves that the poetry in their souls has a thin, second-hand existence. A Rhine steamer with its cookshop on board is a weary conveyance to an out-worn Londoner in August,–a place of humiliation to such among us as would fain keep our vulgar and vacant countrymen at home.–The Rhine hotels, with their sleepless polyglott waiters, and banging doors, and jangling bells, offer small “rest to the sole of one's mind” betwixt July and October. But those who do not treat the river as a mere highway—persons who can bear to see the floating caravanserais crowded with people. athirst for Switzerland or Italy or some place more distant and untrodden, ploughing and fuming their way up the rapid stream—and who are willing to loiter and to be left behind—will find a rich repayment in the Rhine-land wherever they choose to trace a stream up its valley, or to circuit the volcanic hills and weinbergs, which shut in the great river sometimes with too monotonous a closeness.—I know of no ruin more picturesque in shattered choir and broken cross—more solemn in its leafy seclusion at the foot of one of the Seven Hills—than the destroyed convent church at Heisterbach; within an afternoon's easy reach of Godesberg.

When Leipsic music and the Leipsic Fair are the topic, the mind of every one in the least conversant with the Art, will naturally turn in the direction of musical publication, recollecting how long that spirited and friendly town has been one of the main centres to which the poet has looked for the means of diffusing his works, and the knowledge of his works, hither and thither.

But if I advert to the Leipsic utterances of and concerning Music in paper and ink, it is not again to dwell on the gorgeous, liberal, cheap, and correct works poured out in remarkable profusion by the Leipsic publishers, but rather to dwell on another relation of the press with Music; even though it may be thought by many persons, one on which it is indecorous for me to dwell at all. Having myself attempted journalism with reference to Music, it may be held that I have no right to speak of the secrets of the printing-office in other lands; that I am betraying trust, faithless to my own guild, and disloyal in return for courtesy.

With this canon I can but in part agree. While few can regard personality in any form, as a more unbeseeming misuse of experience and confidence than myself, no one writing on Art must avoid (in dread of being misconstrued) from dealing with any important estate that at once influences its well-being, and reflects its quality.

Though a more oddly assorted quartett of authorities could hardly be picked out than Voltaire, Dr. Burney, Zelter, and the author of the “Ramble among the Musicians of Germany,”— each of them gives his drachma or his mite of information to those who sought the causes of the state of Berlin Opera in 1839 in this past history. From the philosopher-courtier, the friend of Johnson and Garrick, the worshipper of Goethe, and the pleasant man of modern art and letters, who mingled in his speculations the Hummels of Germany and the Hunts of Cockayne with a graceful and good-humoured individuality, we learn different parts of one and the same history.

But a little way up the Linden Strasse stood the magnificent Opera House, where all the splendours of the French musical drama were exhibited under the nominal direction of M. le Chevalier Spontini. Though its interior decorations were faded when I saw it in 1839, it seemed to me the handsomest and best proportioned theatre I ever entered; large without vastness, and having that habitable look which is indispensable to the comfort of a place of public amusement, and, perhaps, unattainable in such a building as the Schauspiel Haus, where classical rigour of style is attempted.

Since the days when Mannheim possessed its court-chapel, formed by Stamitz, to which the Abbe Vogler was second master–and its musical circle so tempting as to make the young Mozart wish to settle there–the musical temptations of the Rhine Land have been floating rather than fixed,–unless Frankfort, with its opera and singing societies, and Offenbach, for the sake of Herr André's extensive publishing establishment, be included in the circle.

It is curious but true, that in a busy and thriving city like Cologne, the Opera has been always below mediocrity–that, in Beethoven's birthplace, the accomplished university - town of Bonn, the state of habitual stagnation has been long such as to puzzle all who fancied that in Germany, Music must be every where.–During a part of this century, it is true, musical life emanated from Herr Simrock's press there: but when I passed some weeks close to Bonn, at Godesberg, in the autumn of 1843, indifference and inactivity seemed to have come down upon it ; and any new music, save some paltry local publication, was hard to find, because in small request there. Neither sun nor customer seemed often to visit the bare counting-room into which, during the three long mid-day hours devoted to dining, smoking and sleeping, the unadvised fanatico might have had some difficulty in forcing an entrance, still more in finding any one capable of giving him an intelligent answer, or of receiving a commission.

In the interval betwixt the years 1840 and 1848, the losses of the Dresden Opera were heavier than its gains. The great actress who threw all her strength and emotion into Weber's Shakspearian opera, ceased to appear on the stage; and the creative efforts made in the theatre, did not bring to light a new genius so much as a new element of decay and destruction for music.

The decline of Madame Schröder Devrient was more rapid than it should have been in a singer who is some years younger than the century.—But, in truth, a singer the lady never was, though she promised to become one in the early days when she appeared as Pamina in “Die Zauberflöte” at Vienna. Her voice, since I have known it, was capable of conveying poignant or tender expression, but was harsh, and torn—not so inflexible as incorrect. —It is a mistake to fancy that the German prime donne decline to attempt making an effect with executive brilliancy; they are as prodigal of roulades and shakes as the rest of the sisterhood—giving, however, the attempt in place of the reality; and only when their incompetency is made evident by comparison, falling back on that classical defence which sounds so well, costs so little, and has deceived so many, —“What would you have? I am a German singer.” —Madame Schröder Devrient resolved to be par excellence “the German dramatic singer.”

Thirteen years ago, the railroad travelling of Germany had features which were all its own. In England, the tendency, from the first, was to whirl “the human parcel” from place to place along with an irresistible rapidity entirely precluding the possibility of thought, or conversation, or enjoyment; and to make of the journey a disagreeable, bewildering dream, compounded of several blasts of the shrill steam-whistle—a few tunnels—a few broken clamours, timid or troublesome, of passengers on their entrance and exit —perhaps a few broken limbs— the best part of which is its close. In Belgium more time for observation has been allowed: and rich farms, stately belfries embroidered with tracery and ornament, are to be seen as you are swept—more leisurely than at home—from one town to another. But there was in Belgium, at the period under notice, an uncertainty which kept the mind anxious. So many lines meet and diverge at Mechlin, and so awkwardly was the transmission of baggage managed in 1839—40, that it was seven chances to one but, while the pilgrim was upon his road to the Rubenses at Antwerp, his “mails” might be scouring along the rails to Liege. Hood's story of the bewildered lady, strong in her own foresight, who spent the day in travelling backwards and forwards betwixt Ghent and Ostend, owing to the want of her proper understanding, and her own prudence “in never getting out” is hardly a caricature.