to the worship of the heathen Deities; and that toward the close of the last century, the family still possessed eight hundred thousand serfs, although its riches had then considerably diminished.  Among the collection of treasures of which we speak, was an exceedingly curious relic, which is still in existence.  It is a picture of St. John the Baptist, surrounded by a Bannerol bearing the inscription:  “In the name of the Lord, John, thou shalt be Conqueror.”  It was found by Jean Sobieski himself, after the victory which he had won, under the walls of Vienna, in the tent of the Vizier Kara Mustapha.  It was presented after his death, by Marie d’Arquin, to a Prince Radziwill, with an inscription in her own hand- writing which indicates its origin, and the presentation which she makes of it.  The autograph, with the royal seal, is on the reverse side of the canvas.] How did Weber divine the Poland of other days?  Had he indeed the power to call from the grave of the past, the scenes which we have just contemplated, that he was thus able to clothe them with life, to renew their earlier associations?  Vain questions!  Genius is always endowed with its own sacred intuitions!  Poetry ever reveals to her chosen the secrets of her wild domain!

All the poetry contained in the Polonaises had, like a rich sap, been so fully expressed from them by the genius of Weber, they had been handled with a mastery so absolute, that it was, indeed, a dangerous and difficult thing to attempt them, with the slightest hope of producing the same effect.  He has, however, been surpassed in this species of composition by Chopin, not only in the number and variety of works in this style, but also in the more touching character of the handling, and the new and varied processes of harmony.  Both in construction and spirit, Chopin’s Polonaise In A, with the one in A flat major, resembles very much the one of Weber’s in E Major.  In others he relinquished this broad style:  Shall we say always with a more decided success?  In such a question, decision were a thorny thing.  Who shall restrict the rights of a poet over the various phases of his subject?  Even in the midst of joy, may he not be permitted to be gloomy and oppressed?  After having chanted the splendor of glory, may he not sing of grief?  After having rejoiced with the victorious, may he not mourn with the vanquished?  We may, without any fear of contradiction, assert, that it is not one of the least merits of Chopin, that he has, consecutively, embraced all the phases of which the theme is susceptible, that he has succeeded in eliciting from it all its brilliancy, in awakening from it all its sadness.  The variety of the moods of feeling to which he was himself subject, aided him in the reproduction and comprehension of such a multiplicity of views.  It would be impossible to follow the varied transformations occurring in these compositions, with their pervading melancholy, without admiring the fecundity of his creative force,