birthday present.  I assure you your mother or your aunt, if you surprise them instead with a fine piano performance, will be as much pleased as if you strained your eyes and bent your back for days and nights over the needle-work.  And now as regards painting:  painting and music, though theoretically so nearly related, agree but poorly in practice; at least, if you are in earnest about either.  You say painters often play on the guitar and the flute.  That may be true:  I will allow them those two instruments.  But piano-playing stands on a different footing, even for mere amateurs.  Sweet melodies on those instruments may afford an agreeable companionship for the painter in his rambles through the woods and over the hills; but piano-playing should be the friend of a life-time, ennobled by the elevating enjoyment of lofty master-works.  Therefore, I beg you, do not dissipate your powers too much.  Leave the art of painting to your friends, who are either without talent for music, or who have no opportunity to study it.  Our short lives do not allow the successful practice of several arts.  Of what advantage to our higher culture is it to be able to do ten things tolerably well; what gain for the future, for humanity, or for the true happiness of the individual?  And even if you can succeed in painting something which scarcely can be said to resemble a rose, of what advantage is it, when we have so many real roses to admire?

My dear ladies, I warn you, generally, do not be afraid of the so-called classical, heavy music, especially Beethoven’s, if you desire to learn from it, only or chiefly, repose, lightness, facility, elasticity, graceful, delicate playing, and a fine touch.  It is necessary to play such music after those brilliant qualities have already been, to a certain degree, acquired by mere studies and appropriate pieces.  It is, however, still more foolish and impractical, when parents (who perhaps are skilful musicians, but who have no recollection of their own youth) hold the mistaken opinion that their children ought, from the very beginning, to practise and play only fine classical music, in order that the children’s ears may not be injured by false progressions, by insignificant finger exercises, and by easily comprehensible Italian airs, and that they themselves may not be ruined body and soul.  Gracious heavens! how much pure music, suited to the piano, have not my daughters, as well as many others whom I have brought up to be fine performers, played and studied!—­such, for instance, as the music of Huenten, Czerny, Burgmueller, Kalkbrenner, A. and J. Schmitt, Herz, and many others.  Who finds fault now with their musical culture, with their sound taste, or their want of love for classical music?  What a long road a child has to travel through Etudes of Cramer, Moscheles, and Chopin, before he comes to Bach’s Well-tempered Clavichord, or before he is able, or ought even, to study Beethoven’s Sonate Pathetique!  It is not well, though quite