knowledge and experience with avidity, when its capacity is at its greatest, and the whole world is laid under contribution, came a rich harvest which untold generations may enjoy.  No one of the many that made up the audiences night after night, probably ever formed a guess at what was going on in the brain of this quiet reserved youth during the progress of these plays.  The keen discriminating intelligence which was always sifting and sorting these pictures and stowing them away for use in after years,—­the flashes of enthusiasm,—­the intuitive discernment of intellectual subtleties that brought him into rapport with the author and gave him the perception of being on an equality with the great ones of the earth, here were forces already in operation which were destined to influence the world for generations to come.  To fall from this ideal world of the intellect and the emotions, at the cue of the conductor, back to the cognitions of ordinary life, and a realization of its limitations, must have been as tragic an experience to this youth, who said of himself:  “I live only in my art,” as any he had seen depicted on the stage.  Mental processes like these write their lines deeply on the faces of gifted people.

Of the thirty-one members of the orchestra some had already attained fame, and others achieved it in after years.  In this collection of geniuses the attrition of mind on mind must have been of benefit to each.  The conductor, Joseph Reicha, had a nephew, Anton Reicha, whom he adopted, who played the flute in the orchestra.  He and Beethoven were intimate, and the prominence which Beethoven gives to the flute in his orchestral works may in part be explained by this intimacy.  Reicha afterward joined Beethoven at Vienna, remaining there until 1808, when he took up his residence in Paris.  He was a prolific composer and the author of numerous theoretical works.  Many of his operas were produced in Paris during his lifetime.  He taught at the Paris Conservatoire, and was a member of the Institute.  Then there was Bernhard Romberg, and his cousin Andreas Romberg.  The latter was a musical prodigy, having played the violin in concerts as early as his seventh year.  At seventeen, his virtuosity was such that he was engaged for the Concerts Spirituels at Paris.  Some years later he journeyed to Bonn to be near his cousin Bernhard, with whom he was intimate, and accepted a position in the Elector’s orchestra as violinist.  He later went to Vienna, then Hamburg, and afterward became Kapellmeister at Gotha.  He composed all kinds of music, instrumental and vocal, symphonies, operas, etc.  His setting of Schiller’s “Song of the Bell” is well known at the present day, as well as the oratorio, “The Transient and the Eternal.”  He was made Doctor of Music by Kiel University.  Bernhard Romberg was a distinguished violoncellist.  When his connection with the Elector’s orchestra ceased, he made a professional tour to Italy and Spain