his stay in Stuttgart, being inspired by the capture of Warsaw by the Russians, which took place on September 8, 1831.  Whether looked at from the aesthetical or technical point of view, Chopin’s studies will be seen to be second to those of no composer.  Were it not wrong to speak of anything as absolutely best, their excellences would induce one to call them unequalled.  A striking feature in them compared with Chopin’s other works is their healthy freshness and vigour.  Even the slow, dreamy, and elegiac ones have none of the faintness and sickliness to be found in not a few of the composer’s pieces, especially in several of the nocturnes.  The diversity of character exhibited by these studies is very great.  In some of them the aesthetical, in others the technical purpose predominates; in a few the two are evenly balanced:  in none is either of them absent.  They give a summary of Chopin’s ways and means, of his pianoforte language:  chords in extended positions, wide-spread arpeggios, chromatic progressions (simple, in thirds, and in octaves), simultaneous combinations of contrasting rhythms, &c—­nothing is wanting.  In playing them or hearing them played Chopin’s words cannot fail to recur to one’s mind:  “I have composed a study in my own manner.”  Indeed, the composer’s demands on the technique of the executant were so novel at the time when the studies made their first public appearance that one does not wonder at poor blind Rellstab being staggered, and venting his feelings in the following uncouthly-jocular manner:  “Those who have distorted fingers may put them right by practising these studies; but those who have not, should not play them, at least not without having a surgeon at hand.”  In Op. 10 there are three studies especially noteworthy for their musical beauty.  The third (Lento ma non troppo, in E major) and the sixth (Andante, in E flat minor) may be reckoned among Chopin’s loveliest compositions.  They combine classical chasteness of contour with the fragrance of romanticism.  And the twelfth study (Allegro con fuoco, in C minor), the one composed at Stuttgart after the fall of Warsaw, how superbly grand!  The composer seems to be fuming with rage:  the left hand rushes impetuously along and the right hand strikes in with passionate ejaculations.  With regard to the above-named Lento ma non troppo (Op. 10, No. 3), Chopin said to Gutmann that he had never in his life written another such beautiful melody (chant); and on one occasion when Gutmann was studying it the master lifted up his arms with his hands clasped and exclaimed:  “O, my fatherland!” ("O, me patrie!”) I share with Schumann the opinion that the total weight of Op. 10 amounts to more than that of Op. 25.  Like him I regard also Nos. 1 and 12 as the most important items of the latter collection of studies:  No. 1 (Allegro sostenuto, in A flat major)—­a tremulous mist below, a beautiful breezy melody floating above, and once or twice a more opaque body becoming