conditions, will transform under your eyes the degraded creature; the little being will become great; the deformed being will become beautiful.—­Take the most hideous, repulsive, and complete moral deformity; place it where it stands out most prominently, in the heart of a woman, with all the conditions of physical beauty and royal grandeur which give prominence to crime; and now mix with all this moral deformity a pure feeling, the purest which woman can feel, the maternal feeling; place a mother in your monster and the monster will interest you, and the monster will make you weep, and this creature which caused fear will cause pity, and this deformed soul will become almost beautiful in your eyes.  Thus we have in Le Roi s’amuse paternity sanctifying physical deformity; and in Lucrece Borgia maternity purifying moral deformity. [Footnote:  from Victor Hugo’s preface to “Lucrece Borgia.”]

In fact, Chopin assimilated nothing or infinitely little of the ideas that were surging around him.  His ambition was, as he confided to his friend Hiller, to become to his countrymen as a musician what Uhland was to the Germans as a poet.  Nevertheless, the intellectual activity of the French capital and its tendencies had a considerable influence on Chopin.  They strengthened the spirit of independence in him, and were potent impulses that helped to unfold his individuality in all its width and depth.  The intensification of thought and feeling, and the greater fulness and compactness of his pianoforte style in his Parisian compositions, cannot escape the attentive observer.  The artist who contributed the largest quotum of force to this impulse was probably Liszt, whose fiery passions, indomitable energy, soaring enthusiasm, universal tastes, and capacity of assimilation, mark him out as the very opposite of Chopin.  But, although the latter was undoubtedly stimulated by Liszt’s style of playing the piano and of writing for this instrument, it is not so certain as Miss L. Ramann, Liszt’s biographer, thinks, that this master’s influence can be discovered in many passages of Chopin’s music which are distinguished by a fiery and passionate expression, and resemble rather a strong, swelling torrent than a gently-gliding rivulet.  She instances Nos. 9 and 12 of “Douze Etudes,” Op. 10; Nos. 11 and 12 of “Douze Etudes,” Op. 25; No. 24 of “Vingt-quatre Preludes,” Op. 28; “Premier Scherzo,” Op. 20; “Polonaise” in A flat major, Op. 53; and the close of the “Nocturne” in A flat major, Op. 32.  All these compositions, we are told, exhibit Liszt’s style and mode of feeling.  Now, the works composed by Chopin before he came to Paris and got acquainted with Liszt comprise not only a sonata, a trio, two concertos, variations, polonaises, waltzes, mazurkas, one or more nocturnes, &c., but also—­and this is for the question under consideration of great importance—­most of, if not all, the studies of Op. 10, [Footnote:  Sowinski says that Chopin brought with him to Paris