I yesterday visited Mendelssohn, the celebrated composer.  Having heard rame of his music this winter, particularly that magnificent creation, the “Walpurgisnacht,” I wished to obtain his autograph before leaving, and sent a note for that purpose.  He sent a kind note in answer, adding a chorus out of the Walpurgisnacht from his own hand.  After this, I could not repress the desire of speaking with him. lie received me with true German cordiality, and on learning I was an American, spoke of having been invited to attend a musical festival in New York.  He invited me to call on him if he happened to bo in Leipsic or Dresden when we should pass through, and spoke particularly of the fine music there.  I have rarely seen a man whose countenance bears so plainly the stamp of genius.  He has a glorious dark eye, and Byron’s expression of a “dome of thought,” could never be more appropriately applied than to his lofty and intellectual forehead, the marble whiteness and polish of which arc heightened by the raven hue of his hair.  He is about forty years of age, in the noon of his fame and the full maturity of his genius.  Already as a boy of fourteen he composed an opera, which was played with much success at Berlin; he is now the first living composer of Germany.  Moses Mendelssohn, the celebrated Jewish philosopher, was his grandfather; and his father, now living, is accustomed to say that in his youth he was spoken of as the son of the great Mendelssohn; now he is known as the father of the great Mendelssohn!

CHAPTER XVI.

JOURNEY ON FOOT FROM FRANKFORT TO CASSEL.

The day for leaving Frankfort came at last, and I bade adieu to the gloomy, antique, but still quaint and pleasant city.  I felt like leaving a second home, so much had the memories of many delightful hours spent there attached me to it:  I shall long retain the recollection of its dark old streets, its massive, devil-haunted bridge and the ponderous cathedral, telling of the times of the Crusaders.  I toiled up the long hill on the road to Friedberg, and from the tower at the top took a last look at the distant city, with a heart heavier than the knapsack whose unaccustomed weight rested uneasily on my shoulders.  Being alone—­starting out into the wide world, where us yet I know no one,—­I felt much deeper what it was to find friends in a strange land.  But such is the wanderer’s lot.

We had determined on making the complete tour of Germany on foot, and in order to vary it somewhat, my friend and I proposed taking different routes from Frankfort to Leipsic.  He choose a circuitous course, by way of Nuremberg and the Thuringian forests; while I, whose fancy had been running wild with Goethe’s witches, preferred looking on the gloom and grandeur of the rugged Hartz.  We both left Frankfort on the 23d of April, each bearing a letter of introduction to the same person in Leipsic, where we agreed to