sufficiently admire the sparkling fire, the clear original phrasing, the extraordinary delicacy and refinement with which it is written, or feel grateful enough to the grand old man for it.  Besides, it is all so free and bold and spirited.”  The work would have had a greater immediate success, had not Paris been in profound gloom from the disastrous results of the Moscow campaign and the horrors of the French retreat, where famine and disease finished the work of bayonet and cannon-ball.

The unsettled and disheartening times disturbed all the relations of artists.  There is but little record of Cherubini for several years.  A significant passage in a letter written in 1814, speaking of several military marches written for a Prussian band, indicates the occupation of Paris by the allies and Napoleon’s banishment in Elba.  The period of “The Hundred Days” was spent by Cherubini in England; and the world’s wonder, the battle of Waterloo, was fought, and the Bourbons were permanently restored, before he again set foot in Paris.  The restored dynasty delighted to honor the man whom Napoleon had slighted, and gifts were showered on him alike by the Court and by the leading academies of Europe.  The walls of his studio were covered with medals and diplomas; and his appointment as director of the King’s chapel (which, however, he refused unless shared with Lesueur, the old incumbent) placed him above the daily demands of want.  So, at the age of fifty-five, this great composer for the first time ceased to be anxious on the score of his livelihood.  Thenceforward the life of Cherubini was destined to flow with a placid current, its chief incidents being the great works in church music, which he poured forth year after year, to the admiration and delight of the artistic world.  These remarkable masses, by their dramatic power, greatness of design, and wealth of instrumentation, excited as much discussion and interest throughout Europe as the operas of other composers.  That written in 1816, the C minor requiem mass, is pronounced by Berlioz to be the greatest work of this description ever composed.

We get some pleasant glimpses of Cherubini as a man during this serene autumn of his life.  Spohr tells us how cordially Cherubini, generally regarded as an austere and irritable man, received him.  The world-renowned master, accustomed to handle instruments in great orchestral masses, was not familiar with the smaller compositions known as chamber music, in which the Germans so excelled.  He was greatly delighted when the youthful Spohr turned his attention to this form of music, and he insisted on the latter directing little concerts over and over again at his house.