In 1846, among Liszt’s other musical experiences, he played in concerts with Berlioz throughout Austria and Southern Germany.  The impetuous Osechs and Magyars showed their hot Tartar blood in the passion of enthusiasm they displayed.  Berlioz relates that, at his first concert at Pesth, he performed his celebrated version of the “Rakoczy March,” and there was such a furious explosion of excitement that it wellnigh put an end to the concert.  At the end of the performance Berlioz was wiping the perspiration from his face in the little room off the stage, when the door burst open, and a shabbily dressed man, his face glowing with a strange fire, rushed in, throwing himself at Berlioz’s feet, his eyes brimming with tears.  He kissed the composer over and over again, and sobbed out brokenly:  “Ah, sir!  Me Hungarian... poor devil... not speak French... un, poco l’taliano....  Pardon... my ecstasy...  Ah! understand your cannon...  Yes! yes! the great battle...  Germans, dogs!” Then, striking great blows with his fists on his chest, “In my heart I carry you...  A Frenchman, revolutionist... know how to write music for revolutions.”  At a supper given after the performance, Berlioz tells us Liszt made an inimitable speech, and got so gloriously be-champagned that it was with great difficulty that he could be restrained from pistolling a Bohemian nobleman, at two o’clock in the morning, who insisted that he could carry off more bottles under his belt than Liszt.  But the latter played at a concert next day at noon “assuredly as he had never played before,” says Berlioz.

Before passing from that period of Liszt’s career which was distinctly that of the virtuoso, it is proper to refer to the unique character of the enthusiasm which everywhere followed his track like the turmoil of a stormy sea.  Europe had been familiar with other great players, many of them consummate artists, like Hummel, Henri Herz, Czerny, Kalkbrenner, Field, Moscheles, and Thalberg, the most brilliant name of them all.  But the feeling which these performers aroused was pale and passionless in comparison with that evoked by Franz Liszt.  This was not merely the outcome of Liszt as a player and musician, but of Liszt as a man.  The man always impressed people as immeasurably bigger than what he did, great as that was.  His nature had a lavishness that knew no bounds.  He lived for every distinguished man and beautiful woman, and with every joyous thing.  He had wit and sympathy to spare for gentle and simple, and his kindliness was lavished with royal profusion on the scum as well as the salt of the earth.  This atmosphere of personal grandeur radiated from him, and invested his doings, musical and otherwise, with something peculiarly fine and fascinating.  And then as a player Liszt rose above his mates as something of a different genius, a different race, a different world, to every one else who has ever handled a piano.  He is not to be considered among the great composers, also pianists, who have merely