prototype of one of the imitations with which Frederick frequently amused his friends.  Our hero’s talent for changing the expression of his face, of which George Sand, Liszt, Balzac, Hiller, Moscheles, and other personal acquaintances, speak with admiration, seems already at this time to have been extraordinary.  Of the theatricals which the young folks were wont to get up at the paternal house, especially on the name-days of their parents and friends, Frederick was the soul and mainstay.  With a good delivery he combined a presence of mind that enabled him to be always ready with an improvisation when another player forgot his part.  A clever Polish actor, Albert Piasecki, who was stage-manager on these occasions, gave it as his opinion that the lad was born to be a great actor.  In after years two distinguished members of the profession in France, M. Bocage and Mdme. Dorval, expressed similar opinions.  For their father’s name-day in 1824, Frederick and his sister Emilia wrote conjointly a one-act comedy in verse, entitled the mistake; or, the pretended rogue, which was acted by a juvenile company.  According to Karasowski, the play showed that the authors had a not inconsiderable command of language, but in other respects could not be called a very brilliant achievement.  Seeing that fine comedies are not often written at the ages of fifteen and eleven, nobody will be in the least surprised at the result.

These domestic amusements naturally lead us to inquire who were the visitors that frequented the house.  Among them there was Dr. Samuel Bogumil Linde, rector of the Lyceum and first librarian of the National Library, a distinguished philologist, who, assisted by the best Slavonic scholars, wrote a valuable and voluminous “Dictionary of the Polish Language,” and published many other works on the Slavonic languages.  After this oldest of Nicholas Chopin’s friends I shall mention Waclaw Alexander Maciejowski, who, like Linde, received his university education in Germany, taught then for a short time at the Lyceum, and became in 1819 a professor at the University of Warsaw.  His contributions to various branches of Slavonic history (law, literature, &c.) are very numerous.  However, one of the most widely known of those who were occasionally seen at Chopin’s home was Casimir Brodzinski, the poet, critic, and champion of romanticism, a prominent figure in Polish literary history, who lived in Warsaw from about 1815 to 1822, in which year he went as professor of literature to the University of Cracow.  Nicholas Chopin’s pupil, Count Frederick Skarbek, must not be forgotten; he had now become a man of note, being professor of political economy at the university, and author of several books that treat of that science.  Besides Elsner and Zywny, who have already been noticed at some length, a third musician has to be numbered among friends of the Chopin family—­namely, Joseph Javurek, the esteemed composer and professor at the Conservatorium;