men as Heine, who has made some very illuminating comments on various composers and their music; Max Mueller, a highly cultivated musical amateur; Schopenhauer, whose esthetic principles so deeply influenced Wagner; and Nietzsche, a musician of considerable technical ability.  To these names should be added that of Robert Browning who, together with Shakespeare, has shown a truer insight into the real nature of music than any other English writers have manifested.

With Beethoven, then, music ceases to be an opportunity for the display of mere abstract skill and takes its place on an equality with the arts of poetry and painting as a means of intense personal expression.  If the basis of all worth in literature is that the writer shall have something genuine to say, Beethoven’s letters are certainly literature, for they are the direct revelation of a great and many-sided personality and furnish invaluable testimony as to just what manner of man he was—­too great indeed for music wholly to contain him.  The Letters are not to be read for their felicity of expression, as one might approach the letters of Stevenson or Lamb; for Beethoven, even in his music, always valued substance more than style, or, at any rate, kept style subservient to vitality of utterance.  In fact, one modern French musician claims that he had no taste!  He was not gifted with the literary charm and subtlety of his great follower, Hector Berlioz, and had no practise as a journalist or a critic.  As his deafness increased after the year 1800 and he was therefore forced to live a life of retirement, he committed his thoughts more and more to writing, and undoubtedly left to the world a larger number of letters than if he had been taking a normal part in the activities of his fellowmen.

Particular attention is called to the variety of Beethoven’s correspondents and to their influential position in the artistic and social life of that period.  In the Will, number 55, a most impassioned expression of feeling, Beethoven lays bare his inmost soul, and with an eloquence seldom surpassed has transformed cold words into living symbols of emotion.  The immortal power contained in his music finds its parallel in this document.  He who appeals to our deepest emotions commands for all time our reverent allegiance.  In addition to the letters there is an extensive diary and also numerous conversation books.  All these writings are valuable, not only for themselves, but because they confirm in an unmistakable way certain of the salient characteristics of his musical compositions.  With Beethoven we find in instrumental music, practically for the first time, a prevailing note of sublimity.  He must have been a religious man in the truest sense of the term, with the capacity to realize the mystery and grandeur of human destiny, and numerous passages from the letters give eloquent expression to an analogous train of serious thought. (See letters 1017 and 1129.) One of his favorite books was Sturm’s Betrachtungen ueber die Werke Gottes in der Natur ("Contemplations upon the Works of God in Nature"), and from his diary of 1816 we have the quotation which was the basis of his creed—­“God is immaterial, and for this reason transcends every conception.  Since he is invisible He can have no form.  But from what we observe in His work we may conclude that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.”