perfect, polished, and elaborately wrought.  The distinguished American litterateur, Mr. George William Curtis, who heard him in New York in 1857, thus wrote of him:  “He is a proper artist in this, that he comprehends the character of his instrument.  He neither treats it as a violoncello nor a full orchestra.  Those who in private have enjoyed the pleasure of hearing—­or, to use a more accurate epithet, of seeing—­Strepitoso, that friend of mankind, play the piano, will understand what we mean when we speak of treating the piano as if it were an orchestra.  Strepitoso storms and slams along the keyboard until the tortured instrument gives up its musical soul in despair and breaks its heart of melody by cracking all its strings....  Every instrument has its limitations, but Strepitoso will tolerate no such theory.  He extracts music from his piano, not as if he were sifting the sands for gold, but as if he were raking oysters....  Now, Thalberg’s manner is different from Strepitoso’s.  He plays the piano; that is the phrase which describes his performance.  He plays it quietly and suavely.  You could sit upon the lawn on a June night and hear with delight the sounds that trickled through the moonlight from the piano of this master.  They would not melt your soul in you; they would not touch those longings that, like rays of starry light, respond to the rays of the stars; they would not storm your heart with the yearning passion of their strains, but you would confess it was a good world as you listened, and be glad you lived in it—­you would be glad of your home and all that made it homelike; the moonlight as you listened would melt and change, and your smiling eyes would seem to glitter in cheerful sunlight as Thalberg ended.”

Thalberg’s style was, perhaps, the best possible illustration of the legitimate effects of the pianoforte carried to the highest by as perfect a technique as could possibly be attained by human skill.

That he lacked poetic fire and passion, that the sense of artistic restraint and a refined fastidiousness chilled and fettered him, is doubtlessly true.  Whether the absence of the imaginative warmth and vigor which suffuse a work of art with the glow of something that can not be fully expressed, and kindle the thoughts of the hearer to take hitherto unknown flights, is fully compensated for by that repose and symmetry of style which know exactly what it wishes to express, and, being perfect master of the means of expression, puts forth an exact measure of effort and then stops as if shut down by an iron wall—­this is an open question, and must be answered according to one’s art theories.  The exquisite modeling of a Benvenuto Cellini vase, wrought with patient elaboration into a thing of unsurpassable beauty, does not invoke as high a sense of pleasure as an heroic statue or noble painting by some great master, but of its kind the pleasure is just as complete.  Apart from Thalberg’s power as a player, however,