of honored and honorable laws, who may justly claim that elevation of soul, which no reverse subdues, and which is never found in contradiction with its better self!  Doubly dear and doubly honored must the memory of Chopin, in this respect, ever remain!  Dear to the friends and artists who have known him in his lifetime, dear to the unknown friends who shall learn to love him through his poetic song, as well as to the artists who, in succeeding him, shall find their glory in being worthy of him!

The character of Chopin, in none of its numerous folds, concealed a single movement, a single impulse, which was not dictated by the nicest sense of honor, the most delicate appreciation of affection.  Yet no nature was ever more formed to justify eccentricity, whims, and abrupt caprices.  His imagination was ardent, his feelings almost violent, his physical organization weak, irritable and sickly.  Who can measure the amount of suffering arising from such contrasts?  It must have been bitter, but he never allowed it to be seen!  He kept the secret of his torments, he veiled them from all eyes under the impenetrable serenity of a haughty resignation.

The delicacy of his heart and constitution imposed upon him the woman’s torture, that of enduring agonies never to be confessed, thus giving to his fate some of the darker hues of feminine destiny.  Excluded, by the infirm state of his health, from the exciting arena of ordinary activity, without any taste for the useless buzzing, in which a few bees, joined with many wasps, expend their superfluous strength, he built apart from all noisy and frequented routes a secluded cell for himself.  Neither adventures, embarrassments, nor episodes, mark his life, which he succeeded in simplifying, although surrounded by circumstances which rendered such a result difficult of attainment.  His own feelings, his own impressions, were his events; more important in his eyes than the chances and changes of external life.  He constantly gave lessons with regularity and assiduity; domestic and daily tasks, they were given conscientiously and satisfactorily.  As the devout in prayer, so he poured out his soul in his compositions, expressing in them those passions of the heart, those unexpressed sorrows, to which the pious give vent in their communion with their Maker.  What they never say except upon their knees, he said in his palpitating compositions; uttering in the language of the tones those mysteries of passion and of grief which man has been permitted to understand without words, because there are no words adequate for their expression.

The care taken by Chopin to avoid the zig-zags of life, to eliminate from it all that was useless, to prevent its crumbling into masses without form, has deprived his own course of incident.  The vague lines and indications surrounding his figure like misty clouds, disappear under the touch which would strive to follow or trace their outlines.  He takes part in no actions, no drama, no entanglements,