productions until I had based my style upon more solid models. Without, however, minding his injunction, I seized upon the piano-forte works of Beethoven as they successively appeared, and in them found a solace and delight such as no other composer afforded me.

"In the year 1809, my studies with my master, Weber, closed; and being then also fatherless, I chose Vienna for my residence, to work out my future musical career. Above all, I longed to see and become acquainted with that man who had exercised so powerful an influence over my whole being; whom, though I scarcely understood, I blindly worshipped. I learned that Beethoven was most difficult of access, and would admit no pupil but Ries; and for a long time my anxiety to see him remained ungratified. In the year 1810, however, the longed-for opportunity presented itself. I happened to be one morning in the music shop of Domenico Artaria, who had just been publishing some of my early attempts at composition, when a man entered with short and hasty steps, and gliding through the circle of ladies and professors assembled on business, or talking over musical matters, without looking up, as though he wished to pass unnoticed, made his way direct for Artaria's private office at the bottom of the shop. Presently Artaria called me in, and said, 'This is Beethoven,'—and to the composer, 'This is the youth of whom I have been speaking to you.' Beethoven gave me a friendly nod, and said he had just been hearing a favorable account of me. To some modest and humble expressions which I stammered forth he made no reply, and seemed to wish to break off the conversation. I stole away with a greater longing for that which I had sought, than before this meeting, thinking to myself, 'Am I then, indeed, such a nobody that he could not put one musical question to me? nor express one wish to know who had been my master, or whether I had any acquaintance with his works?' My only satisfactory mode of explaining the matter, and comforting myself for the omission, was in Beethoven's tendency to deafness; for I had seen Artaria speaking close to his ear. But I made up my mind that the more I was excluded from the private intercourse which I so earnestly coveted, the closer I would follow Beethoven in all the productions of his mind."

If Moscheles had never seen more of Beethoven, how rejoiced he would have been on reading his pathetic expressions recorded in those volumes, as to the misconstructions he knew his fellow-men must put on conduct caused by his calamity, at having detected the true cause of coldness in his own instance, and that no mean suggestions of offended vanity made him false to the genius, because repelled 

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