Music survives.  Whatever is eternal in the grace of simple airs or in the Christian innocence of Mozart was apparent, nay, had increased, in her features as the days in passing had added to them not only experience but also revelation and security.  She was serene.  The posture of her head was high, and her body, which was visibly informed by an immortal spirit, had in its carriage a large, a regal, an uplifted bearing which even now as I write of it, after so many years, turns common every other sight that has encountered me.  This was the way in which I first saw her upon her own hillside at evening.

With every season I returned.  And with every season she greeted my coming with a more generous and a more vivacious air.  I think the years slipped off and did not add themselves upon her mind:  the common doom of mortality escaped her until, perhaps, its sign was imposed upon her hair—­for this at last was touched all through with that appearance or gleam which might be morning or which might be snow.

She was able to conjure all evil.  Those desperate enemies of mankind which lie in siege of us all around grew feeble and were silent when she came.  Nor has any other force than hers dared to enter the rooms where she had lived:  it is her influence alone which inhabits them to-day.  There is a vessel of copper, enamelled in green and gilded, which she gave with her own hands to a friend overseas.  I have twice touched it in an evil hour.

Strength, sustenance, and a sacramental justice are permanent in such lives, and such lives also attain before their close to so general a survey of the world that their appreciations are at once accurate and universal.

On this account she did not fail in any human conversation, nor was she ever for a moment less than herself; but always and throughout her moods her laughter was unexpected and full, her fear natural, her indignation glorious.

Above all, her charity extended like a breeze:  it enveloped everything she knew.  The sense of destiny faded from me as the warmth of that charity fell upon my soul; the foreknowledge of death retreated, as did every other unworthy panic.

She drew the objects of her friendship into something new; they breathed an air from another country, so that those whom she deigned to regard were, compared with other men, like the living compared with the dead; or, better still, they were like men awake while the rest were tortured by dreams and haunted of the unreal.  Indeed, she had a word given to her which saved all the souls of her acquaintance.

It is not true that influence of this sort decays or passes into vaguer and vaguer depths of memory.  It does not dissipate.  It is not dissolved.  It does not only spread and broaden:  it also increases with the passage of time.  The musicians bequeath their spirit, notably those who have loved delightful themes and easy melodies.  The poets are read for ever; but those who resemble her do more, for they grow out upon the centuries—­they themselves and not their arts continue.  There is stuff in their legend.  They are a tangible inheritance for the hurrying generations of men.