with interesting matter.  Looked at from the musician’s point of view, how much do we not see that is novel and strange, and beautiful and fascinating withal?  Sharp dissonances, chromatic passing notes, suspensions and anticipations, displacements of accent, progressions of perfect fifths (the horror of schoolmen), [footnote:  See especially the passage near the close of Op. 30, No. 4, where there are four bars of simultaneous consecutive fifths and sevenths.] sudden turns and unexpected digressions that are so unaccountable, so out of the line of logical sequence, that one’s following the composer is beset with difficulties, marked rhythm picture to us the graceful motions of the dancers, and suggest the clashing of the spurs and the striking of heels against the ground.  The second mazurka might be called “the request.”  All the arts of persuasion are tried, from the pathetic to the playful, and a vein of longing, not unmixed with sadness, runs through the whole, or rather forms the basis of it.  The tender commencement of the second part is followed, as it were, by the several times repeated questions—­Yes?  No? (Bright sunshine?  Dark clouds?) But there comes no answer, and the poor wretch has to begin anew.  A helpless, questioning uncertainty and indecision characterise the third mazurka.  For a while the composer gives way (at the beginning of the second part) to anger, and speaks in a defiant tone; but, as if perceiving the unprofitableness of it, returns soon to his first strain.  Syncopations, suspensions, and chromatic passing notes form here the composer’s chief stock in trade, displacement of everything in melody, harmony, and rhythm is the rule.  Nobody did anything like this before Chopin, and, as far as I know, nobody has given to the world an equally minute and distinct representation of the same intimate emotional experiences.  My last remarks hold good with the fourth mazurka, which is bleak and joyless till, with the entrance of A major, a fairer prospect opens.  But those jarring tones that strike in wake the dreamer pitilessly.  The commencement of the mazurka, as well as the close on the chord of the sixth, the chromatic glidings of the harmonies, the strange twirls and skips, give a weird character to this piece.

The origin of the polonaise (Taniec Polski, Polish dance), like that of the, no doubt, older mazurka, is lost in the dim past.  For much credit can hardly be given to the popular belief that it developed out of the measured procession, to the sound of music, of the nobles and their ladies, which is said to have first taken place in 1574, the year after his election to the Polish throne, when Henry of Anjou received the grandees of his realm.  The ancient polonaises were without words, and thus they were still in the time of King Sobieski (1674-96).  Under the subsequent kings of the house of Saxony, however, they were often adapted to words or words were adapted to them.  Celebrated polonaises of political significance are: