[Footnote:  In most of the pieces where, as in this one, the left-hand accompaniment consists of an undulating figure, Chopin wished it to be played very soft and subdued.  This is what Gutmann said.] As to the one in D flat, nothing can equal the finish and delicacy of execution, the flow of gentle feeling, lightly rippled by melancholy, and spreading out here and there in smooth expansiveness.  But all this sweetness enervates; there is poison in it.  We should not drink in these thirds, sixths, &c., without taking an antidote of Bach or Beethoven.  Both the nocturnes of Op. 32 are pretty specimens of Chopin’s style of writing in the tender, calm, and dreamy moods.  Of the two (in B major and A flat major) I prefer the quiet, pellucid first one.  It is very simple, ornaments being very sparingly introduced.  The quietness and simplicity are, however, at last disturbed by an interrupted cadence, sombre sounds as of a kettle-drum, and a passionate recitative with intervening abrupt chords.  The second nocturne has less originality and pith.  Deux Nocturnes (in G minor and G major), Op. 37, are two of the finest, I am inclined to say, the two finest, of this class of Chopin’s pieces; but they are of contrasting natures.  The first and last sections of the one in G minor are plaintive and longing, and have a wailing accompaniment; the chord progressions of the middle section glide along hymn-like. [Footnote:  Gutmann played this section quicker than the rest, and said that Chopin forgot to mark the change of movement.] Were it possible to praise one part more emphatically than another without committing an injustice, I would speak of the melodic exquisiteness of the first motive.  But already I see other parts rise reproachfully before my repentant conscience.  A beautiful sensuousness distinguishes the nocturne in G major:  it is luscious, soft, rounded, and not without a certain degree of languor.  The successions of thirds and, sixths, the semitone progressions, the rocking motion, the modulations (note especially those of the first section and the transition from that to the second), all tend to express the essential character.  The second section in C major reappears in E major, after a repetition of part of the first section; a few bars of the latter and a reminiscence of the former conclude the nocturne.  But let us not tarry too long in the treacherous atmosphere of this Capua--it bewitches and unmans.  The two nocturnes (in C minor and F sharp minor) which form Op. 48 are not of the number of those that occupy foremost places among their companions.  Still, they need not be despised.  The melody of the C minor portion of the first is very expressive, and the second has in the C sharp minor portion the peculiar Chopinesque flebile dolcezza.  In playing these nocturnes there occurred to me a remark of Schumann’s, made when he reviewed some nocturnes by Count Wielhorski.  He said, on that occasion, that the quicker middle movements which Chopin frequently introduces into