finer than his own style.  And this inability to admit the meritoriousness or even the legitimacy of anything that differed from what he was accustomed to, was not at all peculiar to this great pianist; we see it every day in men greatly his inferiors.  Kalkbrenner’s lament that when he ceased to play there would be no representative left of the grand pianoforte school ought to call forth our sympathy.  Surely we cannot blame him for wishing to perpetuate what he held to be unsurpassable!  According to Hiller, Chopin went a few times to the class of advanced pupils which Kalkbrenner had advised him to attend, as he wished to see what the thing was like.  Mendelssohn, who had a great opinion of Chopin and the reverse of Kalkbrenner, was furious when he heard of this.  But were Chopin’s friends correct in saying that he played better than Kalkbrenner, and could learn nothing from him?  That Chopin played better than Kalkbrenner was no doubt true, if we consider the emotional and intellectual qualities of their playing.  But I think it was not correct to say that Chopin could learn nothing from the older master.  Chopin was not only a better judge of Kalkbrenner than his friends, who had only sharp eyes for his short-comings, and overlooked or undervalued his good qualities, but he was also a better judge of himself and his own requirements.  He had an ideal in his mind, and he thought that Kalkbrenner’s teaching would help him to realise it.  Then there is also this to be considered:  unconnected with any school, at no time guided by a great master of the instrument, and left to his own devices at a very early age, Chopin found himself, as it were, floating free in the air without a base to stand on, without a pillar to lean against.  The consequent feeling of isolation inspires at times even the strongest and most independent self-taught man—­and Chopin, as a pianist, may almost be called one—­with distrust in the adequacy of his self-acquired attainments, and an exaggerated idea of the advantages of a school education.  “I cannot create a new school, because I do not even know the old one.”  This may or may not be bad reasoning, but it shows the attitude of Chopin’s mind.  It is also possible that he may have felt the inadequacy and inappropriateness of his technique and style for other than his own compositions.  And many facts in the history of his career as an executant would seem to confirm the correctness of such a feeling.  At any rate, after what we have read we cannot attribute his intention of studying under Kalkbrenner to undue self-depreciation.  For did he not consider his own playing as good as that of Herz, and feel that he had in him the stuff to found a new era in music?  But what was it then that attracted him to Kalkbrenner, and made him exalt this pianist above all the pianists he had heard?  If the reader will recall to mind what I said in speaking of Mdlles.  Sontag and Belleville of Chopin’s love of beauty of tone, elegance, and neatness, he cannot be surprised at