Warsaw, the 12th of June, 1835.

   N.B.—­Mr. Kirkow, the merchant, and his son George, who was
   at Mr. Reinschmid’s at your farewell party, recommend
   themselves to you, and wish you good health.  Adieu.

Julius Fontana, the friend and companion of Frederick, after stating (in his preface to Chopin’s posthumous works) that Chopin had never another pianoforte teacher than Zywny, observes that the latter taught his pupil only the first principles.  “The progress of the child was so extraordinary that his parents and his professor thought they could do no better than abandon him at the age of 12 to his own instincts, and follow instead of directing him.”  The progress of Frederick must indeed have been considerable, for in Clementina Tanska-Hofmanowa’s Pamiatka po dobrej matce (Memorial of a good Mother) [footnote:  Published in 1819.] the writer relates that she was at a soiree at Gr——­’s, where she found a numerous party assembled, and heard in the course of the evening young Chopin play the piano—­“a child not yet eight years old, who, in the opinion of the connoisseurs of the art, promises to replace Mozart.”  Before the boy had completed his ninth year his talents were already so favourably known that he was invited to take part in a concert which was got up by several persons of high rank for the benefit of the poor.  The bearer of the invitation was no less a person than Ursin Niemcewicz, the publicist, poet, dramatist, and statesman, one of the most remarkable and influential men of the Poland of that day.  At this concert, which took place on February 24, 1818, the young virtuoso played a concerto by Adalbert Gyrowetz, a composer once celebrated, but now ignominiously shelved—­sic transit gloria mundi—­and one of Riehl’s “divine Philistines.”  An anecdote shows that at that time Frederick was neither an intellectual prodigy nor a conceited puppy, but a naive, modest child that played the pianoforte, as birds sing, with unconscious art.  When he came home after the concert, for which of course he had been arrayed most splendidly and to his own great satisfaction, his mother said to him:  “Well, Fred, what did the public like best?”—­“Oh, mamma,” replied the little innocent, “everybody was looking at my collar.”

The debut was a complete success, and our Frederick—­Chopinek (diminutive of Chopin) they called him—­became more than ever the pet of the aristocracy of Warsaw.  He was invited to the houses of the Princes Czartoryski, Sapieha, Czetwertynski, Lubecki, Radziwill, the Counts Skarbek, Wolicki, Pruszak, Hussarzewski, Lempicki, and others.  By the Princess Czetwertynska, who, says Liszt, cultivated music with a true feeling of its beauties, and whose salon was one of the most brilliant and select of Warsaw, Frederick was introduced to the Princess Lowicka, the beautiful Polish wife of the Grand Duke Constantine, who, as Countess Johanna Antonia Grudzinska, had so charmed the latter that,