mentioned works.  Schumann, who reviewed it in 1836, thought it had perhaps been written in the eighteenth year of the composer, but he found in it, some confused passages excepted, no indications of the author’s youth.  In this Rondeau a la Mazur the individuality of Chopin and with it his nationality begin to reveal themselves unmistakably.  Who could fail to recognise him in the peculiar sweet and persuasive flows of sound, and the serpent-like winding of the melodic outline, the wide-spread chords, the chromatic progressions, the dissolving of the harmonies and the linking of their constituent parts!  And, as I have said elsewhere in speaking of this work:  “The harmonies are often novel, and the matter is more homogeneous and better welded into oneness.”

Chopin’s pianoforte lessons, as has already been stated, came to an end when he was twelve years old, and thenceforth he was left to his own resources.

The school of that time [remarks Fontana] could no longer suffice him, he aimed higher, and felt himself impelled towards an ideal which, at first vague, before long grew into greater distinctness.  It was then that, in trying his strength, he acquired that touch and style, so different from those of his predecessors, and that he succeeded in creating at last that execution which since then has been the admiration of the artistic world.

The first stages of the development of his peculiar style may be traced in the compositions we have just now discussed.  In the variations and first Rondo which Chopin wrote at or before the age of fifteen, the treatment of the instrument not only proves that he was already as much in his element on the pianoforte as a fish in the water, but also shows that an as yet vaguely-perceived ideal began to beckon him onward.  Karasowski, informed by witnesses of the boy’s studies in pianoforte playing, relates that Frederick, being struck with the fine effect of a chord in extended harmony, and unable, on account of the smallness of his hands, to strike the notes simultaneously, set about thinking how this physical obstacle could be overcome.  The result of his cogitations was the invention of a contrivance which he put between his fingers and kept there even during the night, by this means endeavouring to increase the extensibility and flexibility of his hands.  Who, in reading of this incident in Chopin’s life, is not reminded of Schumann and his attempt to strengthen his fingers, an attempt that ended so fatally for his prospects as a virtuoso!  And the question, an idle one I admit, suggests itself:  Had Chopin been less fortunate than he was, and lost, like Schumann, the command of one of his hands before he had formed his pianoforte style, would he, as a composer, have risen to a higher position than we know him to have attained, or would he have achieved less than he actually did?  From the place and wording of Karasowski’s account it would appear that this experiment of Chopin’s