this shameful criticism, defending Chopin and adducing the opinions of numerous musicians in support of their own.  But the valorous editor “ventures to assure the distinguished critics and the publishers that there will be no difficulty in pointing out a hundred palpable faults, and an infinitude of meretricious uglinesses, such as, to real taste and judgment, are intolerable.”  Three more letters appeared in the following numbers—­two for (Amateur and Professor) and one against (Inquirer) Chopin; the editor continuing to insist with as much violence as stupidity that he was right.  It is pleasant to turn from this senseless opposition to the friends and admirers of the master.  Of them we learn something in Davison’s Essay on the Works of F. Chopin, from which I must quote a few passages:—­

This Concerto [the E minor] has been made known to the amateurs of music in England by the artist-like performance of Messrs. W. H. Holmes, F. B. Jewson, H. B. Richards, R. Barnett, and other distinguished members of the Royal Academy, where it is a stock piece...The Concerto [in F minor] has been made widely known of late by the clever performance of that true little prodigy Demoiselle Sophie Bohrer....These charming bagatelles [the Mazurkas] have been made widely known in England through the instrumentality of Mr. Moscheles, Mr. Cipriani Potter, Mr. Kiallmark, Madame de Belleville-Oury, Mr. Henry Field (of Bath), Mr. Werner, and other eminent pianists, who enthusiastically admire and universally recommend them to their pupils...To hear one of those eloquent streams of pure loveliness [the nocturnes] delivered by such pianists as Edouard Pirkhert, William Holmes, or Henry Field, a pleasure we frequently enjoyed, is the very transcendency of delight.

[Footnote:  Information about the above-named pianists may be found in the musical biographical dictionaries, with three exceptions-namely, Kiallmark, Werner, and Pirkhert.  George Frederick Kiallmark (b.  November 7, 1804; d.  December 13, 1887), a son of the violinist and composer George Kiallmark, was for many years a leading professor in London.  He is said to have had a thorough appreciation and understanding of Chopin’s genius, and even in his last years played much of that master’s music.  He took especial delight in playing Chopin’s Nocturnes, no Sunday ever passed without his family hearing him play two or three of them.—­Louis Werner (whose real name was Levi) was the son of a wealthy and esteemed Jewish family living at Clapham.  He studied music in London under Moscheles, and, though not an eminent pianist, was a good teacher.  His amiability assured him a warm welcome in society.—­Eduard Pirkhert died at Vienna, aged 63, on February 28, 1881.  To Mr. Ernst Pauer, who is never appealed to in vain, I am indebted for the following data as well as for the subject—­matter of my notice on Werner:  “Eduard Pirkhert, born at Graz in 1817, was a pupil of Anton Halm and Carl