The Sperl and Volksgarten [says Hanslick] were on the Strauss and Lanner days the favourite and most frequented “concert localities.”  In the year 1839 Strauss and Lanner had already each of them published more than too works.  The journals were thrown into ecstasy by every new set of waltzes; innumerable articles appeared on Strauss, and Lanner, enthusiastic, humorous, pathetic, and certainly longer than those that were devoted to Beethoven and Mozart.

These glimpses of the notabilities and manners of a by-gone generation, caught, as it were, through the chinks of the wall which time is building up between the past and the present, are instructive as well as amusing.  It would be a great mistake to regard these details, apparently very loosely connected with the life of Chopin, as superfluous appendages to his biography.  A man’s sympathies and antipathies are revelations of his nature, and an artist’s surroundings make evident his position and merit, the degree of his originality being undeterminable without a knowledge of the time in which he lived.  Moreover, let the impatient reader remember that, Chopin’s life being somewhat poor in incidents, the narrative cannot be an even-paced march, but must be a series of leaps and pauses, with here and there an intervening amble, and one or two brisk canters.

Having described the social and artistic sphere, or rather spheres, in which Chopin moved, pointed out the persons with whom he most associated, and noted his opinions regarding men and things, almost all that is worth telling of his life in the imperial city is told—­almost all, but not all.  Indeed, of the latter half of his sojourn there some events have yet to be recorded which in importance, if not in interest, surpass anything that is to be found in the preceding and the foregoing part of the present chapter.  I have already indicated that the disappointment of Chopin’s hopes and the failure of his plans cannot altogether be laid to the charge of unfavourable circumstances.  His parents must have thought so too, and taken him to task about his remissness in the matter of giving a concert, for on May 14, 1831, Chopin writes to them:—­“My most fervent wish is to be able to fulfil your wishes; till now, however, I found it impossible to give a concert.”  But although he had not himself given a concert he had had an opportunity of presenting himself in the best company to the public of Vienna.  In the “Theaterzeitung” of April 2, 1831, Madame Garzia-Vestris announced a concert to be held in the Redoutensaal during the morning hours of April 4, in which she was to be assisted by the Misses Sabine and Clara Heinefetter, Messrs. Wild, Chopin, Bohm (violinist), Hellmesberger (violinist, pupil of the former), Merk, and the brothers Lewy (two horn-players).  Chopin was distinguished from all the rest, as a homo ignotus et novus, by the parenthetical “pianoforte-player” after his name, no such information being thought