Robert Schumann’s law studies were inexpressibly tedious to him, and so he told his sympathetic professor, the learned Thibaut, author of the treatise “On the Purity of Music,” in a characteristic manner.  He went to the piano and played Weber’s “Invitation to the Waltz,” commenting on the different passages:  “Now she speaks—­that’s the love prattle; now he speaks—­that’s the man’s earnest voice; now both the lovers speak together “; concluding with the remark, “Isn’t all that better far than anything that jurisprudence can utter?” The young student became quite popular in society as a pianist, heard Ernst and Paganini for the first time, and composed several works, among them the Toccata in D major.  The genius for music would come to the fore in spite of jurisprudence.  A vacation trip to Italy which the young man made gave fresh fuel to the flame, and he began to write the most passionate pleas to his mother that she should con sent to his adoption of a musical career.  The distressed woman wrote to Wieck to know what he thought, and the answer was favorable to Robert’s aspirations.  Robert was intoxicated with his mother’s concession, and he poured out his enthusiasm to Wieck:  “Take me as I am, and, above all, bear with me.  No blame shall depress me, no praise make me idle.  Pails upon pails of very cold theory can not hurt me, and I will work at it without the least murmur.”

Taking lodgings at the house of Wieck, Schumann devoted himself to piano-forte playing with intense ardor; but his zeal outran prudence.  To hasten his proficiency and acquire an independent action for each finger, he contrived a mechanical apparatus which held the third finger of the right hand immovable, while the others went through their evolutions.  The result was such a lameness of the hand that it was incurable, and young Schumann’s career as a virtuoso was for ever checked.  His deep sorrow, however, did not unman him long, for he turned his attention to the study of composition and counterpoint under Kupsch, and, afterward, Heinrich Dorn.  He remained for three years under Wieck’s roof, and the companionship of the child Clara, whose marvelous musical powers were the talk of Leipzig, was a sweet consolation to him in his troubles and his toil, though ten years his junior.  The love, which became a part of his life, had already begun to flutter into unconscious being in his feeling for a shy and reserved little girl.

Schumann tells us that the year 1834 was the most important one of his life, for it witnessed the birth of the “N’eue Zeitschrift fur Musik,” a journal which was to embody his notions of ideal music, and to be the organ of a clique of enthusiasts in lifting the art out of Philistinism and commonplace.  The war-cry was “Reform in art,” and never-ending battle against the little and conventional ideas which were believed then to be the curse of German music.  Among the earlier contributors were Wieck, Schumke, Knorr, Banck, and Schumann himself, who wrote under