showed by their criticisms and works that their sympathies were with Schiller, Goethe, Burger, Byron, Shukovski, &c.  Wilna was the chief centre from which this movement issued, and Brodziriski one of the foremost defenders of the new principles and the precursor of Mickiewicz, the appearance of whose ballads, romances, “Dziady” and “Grazyna” (1822), decided the war in favour of romanticism.  The names of Anton Malczewski, Bogdan Zaleski, Severyn Goszczynski, and others, ought to be cited along with that of the more illustrious Mickiewicz, but I will not weary the reader either with a long disquisition or with a dry enumeration.  I have said above that Polish poetry had become more of a people’s poetry.  This, however, must not be understood in the sense of democratic poetry.

The Polish poets [says C. Courriere, to whose “Histoire de la litterature chez les Slaves” I am much indebted] ransacked with avidity the past of their country, which appeared to them so much the more brilliant because it presented a unique spectacle in the history of nations.  Instead of breaking with the historic traditions they respected them, and gave them a new lustre, a new life, by representing them under a more beautiful, more animated, and more striking form.  In short, if Polish romanticism was an evolution of poetry in the national sense, it did not depart from the tendencies of its elder sister, for it saw in the past only the nobility; it was and remained, except in a few instances, aristocratic.

Now let us keep in mind that this contest of classicism and romanticism, this turning away from a dead formalism to living ideals, was taking place at that period of Frederick Chopin’s life when the human mind is most open to new impressions, and most disposed to entertain bold and noble ideas.  And, further, let us not undervalue the circumstance that he must have come in close contact with one of the chief actors in this unbloody revolution.

Frederick spent his first school holidays at Szafarnia, in Mazovia, the property of the Dziewanowski family.  In a letter written on August 19, 1824, he gives his friend and school-fellow William Kolberg, some account of his doings there—­of his strolls and runs in the garden, his walks and drives to the forest, and above all of his horsemanship.  He tells his dear Willie that he manages to keep his seat, but would not like to be asked how.  Indeed, he confesses that, his equestrian accomplishments amount to no more than to letting the horse go slowly where it lists, and sitting on it, like a monkey, with fear.  If he had not yet met with an accident, it was because the horse had so far not felt any inclination to throw him off.  In connection with his drives—­in britzka and in coach—­he does not forget to mention that he is always honoured with a back-seat.  Still, life at Szafarnia was not unmixed happiness, although our hero bore the ills with admirable stoicism:—­