We heard her a few hours ago; she played in a really superior way the beautiful Concerto of Chopin in E flat minor [of course E minor]; she was applauded with enthusiasm. [Footnote:  Chopin accompanied on a second piano.  The occasion was a soiree at the house of Madame de Courbonne.] All we can say to give you an idea of Mdlle.  O’Meara’s playing is that there is in her playing all that is in her look, and in addition to it an admirable method, and excellent fingering.  Her success has been complete; in hearing her, statesmen were moved...and the young ladies, those who are good musicians, forgave her her prettiness.

As regards Chopin’s male pupils, we have to note George Mathias (born at Paris in 1826), the well-known professor of the piano at the Paris Conservatoire, [footnote:  He retired a year or two ago.] and still more widely-known composer of more than half-a-hundred important works (sonatas, trios, concertos, symphonic compositions, pianoforte pieces, songs, &c.), who enjoyed the master’s teaching from 1839 to 1844; Lysberg (1821-1873), whose real name was Charles Samuel Bovy, for many years professor of the piano at the Conservatoire of his native town, Geneva, and a very fertile composer of salon pieces for the piano (composer also of a one-act comic opera, La Fills du Carillonneur), distinguished by “much poetic feeling, an extremely careful form, an original colouring, and in which one often seems to see pass a breath of Weber or Chopin”; [Footnote:  Supplement et Complement to Fetis’ Biographie universelle des Musiciens, published under the direction of Arthur Pougin.] the Norwegian Thomas Dyke Acland Tellefsen (1823-1874), a teacher of the piano in Paris and author of an edition of Chopin’s works; Carl Mikuli (born at Czernowitz in 1821), since 1858 artistic director of the Galician Musical Society (conservatoire, concerts, &c.), and author of an edition of Chopin’s works; and Adolph Gutmann, the master’s favourite pupil par excellence, of whom we must speak somewhat more at length.  Karasowski makes also mention of Casimir Wernik, who died at St. Petersburg in 1859, and of Gustav Schumann, a teacher of the piano at Berlin, who, however, was only during the winter of 1840-1841 with the Polish master.  For Englishmen the fact of the late Brinley Richards and Lindsay Sloper having been pupils of Chopin—­the one for a short, the other for a longer period—­will be of special interest.

Adolph Gutmann was a boy of fifteen when in 1834 his father brought him to Paris to place him under Chopin.  The latter, however, did not at first feel inclined to accept the proposed trust; but on hearing the boy play he conceived so high an idea of his capacities that he agreed to undertake his artistic education.  Chopin seems to have always retained a thorough belief in his muscular pupil, although some of his great pianist friends thought this belief nothing but a strange delusion.  There are also piquant anecdotes told