songs, duets, trios, nay, venturing even on larger works for chorus and orchestra.  The musical studies commenced in Breslau were continued in Vienna; preferring musical scores to medical books, the conversations of musicians to the lectures of professors, he first neglected and at last altogether abandoned the study of the healing art.  A. Boguslawski, who wrote a biography of Elsner, tells the story differently and more poetically.  When, after a long illness during his sojourn in Breslau, thus runs his version, Elsner went, on the day of the Holy Trinity in the year 1789, for the first time to church, he was so deeply moved by the sounds of the organ that he fainted.  On recovering he felt his whole being filled with such ineffable comfort and happiness that he thought he saw in this occurrence the hand of destiny.  He, therefore, set out for Vienna, in order that he might draw as it were at the fountain-head the great principles of his art.  Be this as it may, in 1791 we hear of Elsner as violinist in Brunn, in 1792 as musical conductor at a theatre in Lemberg—­where he is busy composing dramatic and other works—­and near the end of the last century as occupant of the same post at the National Theatre in Warsaw, which town became his home for the rest of his life.  There was the principal field of his labours; there he died, after a sojourn of sixty-two years in Poland, on April 18, 1854, leaving behind him one of the most honoured names in the history of his adopted country.  Of the journeys he undertook, the longest and most important was, no doubt, that to Paris in 1805.  On the occasion of this visit some of his compositions were performed, and when Chopin arrived there twenty-five years afterwards, Elsner was still remembered by Lesueur, who said:  “Et que fait notre bon Elsner?  Racontez-moi de ses nouvelles.”  Elsner was a very productive composer:  besides symphonies, quartets, cantatas, masses, an oratorio, &c., he composed twenty-seven Polish operas.  Many of these works were published, some in Warsaw, some in various German towns, some even in Paris.  But his activity as a teacher, conductor, and organiser was perhaps even more beneficial to the development of the musical art in Poland than that as a composer.  After founding and conducting several musical societies, he became in 1821 director of the then opened Conservatorium, at the head of which he continued to the end of its existence in 1830.  To complete the idea of the man, we must not omit to mention his essay In how far is the Polish language suitable for music?  As few of his compositions have been heard outside of Poland, and these few long ago, rarely, and in few places, it is difficult to form a satisfactory opinion with regard to his position as a composer.  Most accounts, however, agree in stating that he wrote in the style of the modern Italians, that is to say, what were called the modern Italians in the later part of the last and the earlier part of this century.