Chopin’s waltzes, the most popular of his compositions, are not poesie intime like the greater number of his works. [Footnote:  Op. 34, No. 2, and Op. 64, No. 2, however, have to be excepted, to some extent at least.] In them the composer mixes with the world-looks without him rather than within—­and as a man of the world conceals his sorrows and discontents under smiles and graceful manners.  The bright brilliancy and light pleasantness of the earlier years of his artistic career, which are almost entirely lost in the later years, rise to the surface in the waltzes.  These waltzes are salon music of the most aristocratic kind.  Schumann makes Florestan say of one of them, and he might have said it of all, that he would not play it unless one half of the female dancers were countesses.  But the aristocraticalness of Chopin’s waltzes is real, not conventional; their exquisite gracefulness and distinction are natural, not affected.  They are, indeed, dance-poems whose content is the poetry of waltz-rhythm and movement, and the feelings these indicate and call forth.  In one of his most extravagantly-romantic critical productions Schumann speaks, in connection with Chopin’s Op. 18, “Grande Valse brillante,” the first-published (in June, 1834) of his waltzes, of “Chopin’s body and mind elevating waltz,” and its “enveloping the dancer deeper and deeper in its floods.”  This language is altogether out of proportion with the thing spoken of; for Op. 18 differs from the master’s best waltzes in being, not a dance-poem, but simply a dance, although it must be admitted that it is an exceedingly spirited one, both as regards piquancy and dash.  When, however, we come to Op. 34, “Trois Valses brillantes” (published in December, 1838), Op. 42, “Valse” (published in July, 1840), and Op. 64, “Trois Valses” (published in September, 1847), the only other waltzes published by him, we find ourselves face to face with true dance-poems.  Let us tarry for a moment over Op. 34.  How brisk the introductory bars of the first (in A flat major) of these three waltzes!  And what a striking manifestation of the spirit of that dance all that follows!  We feel the wheeling motions; and where, at the seventeenth bar of the second part, the quaver figure enters, we think we see the flowing dresses sweeping round.  Again what vigour in the third part, and how coaxingly tender the fourth!  And, lastly, the brilliant conclusion—­the quavers intertwined with triplets!  The second waltz (in A minor; Lento) is of quite another, of a more retired and private, nature, an exception to the rule.  The composer evidently found pleasure in giving way to this delicious languor, in indulging in these melancholy thoughts full of sweetest, tenderest loving and longing.  But here words will not avail.  One day when Stephen Heller—­my informant—­was at Schlesinger’s music-shop in Paris, Chopin entered.  The latter, hearing Heller ask for one of his waltzes, inquired of him which of them he liked best.  “It