MOZART 309 ing to Salzburg, Leopold Mozart, in the spring of 1 763, took his children on a more lengthy tour to Munich, Paris, London, and The Hague, and everywhere their playing, especially Wolfgang's performances on the organ, which he had now learned, were listened to with delight and astonishment. At Heidelberg the priest of the Church of the Holy Ghost engraved on the organ the boy's name and the date of his visit, in remembrance of "this wonder of. God," as he called the child. At London, old Mozart says, they were received, on April 27th, by King George III. and Queen Caroline, at the palace, and remained from six to nine o'clock. The king placed before the boy compositions of Bach and Handel, all of which he played at sight perfectly ; he had also the honor of ac- companying the queen in a song. " On leaving the palace," the careful father says, " we received a present of 24 guineas." A great delight was now before him, for his father had resolved on a journey to Italy, then far more than now the land of music. How much this visit did for the young maestro it is impossible to say ; he has not, like Mendelssohn, left us an " Italian Symphony," recording the impressions which that sunny spot of classic beauty had made upon him, but there can be little doubt of the great influence it had on the whole of his after-life. There are some significant words which he wrote eight years later to his father from Paris : " You must faithfully promise to let me see Italy again in order to refresh my life. I do entreat of you to confer this happiness upon me." In Mantua, Milan, Bologna (where he had the good fortune to meet the learned Padre Martini, one of the soundest musicians of his age, and for whom he ever afterward maintained a warm attach- ment), Florence, Rome, and Naples, the young genius was received everywhere with enthusiasm by the crowds who came to hear him. In Naples the super- stitious people believed that there was magic -in his playing, and pointed to a ring on his left hand as the cause of his wonderful dexterity ; and it was only when he had taken this off, and gone on playing just the same, that they had to acknowledge it was simply the perfection of art. There is something sad in contrasting these brilliant early days with the anxious times that came later on, when the great Mozart was compelled to wait in the ante-chambers of the great, dine with their lacqueys, give lessons to stupid young countesses, and write begging letters to his friends ; yet, in reality, those later days, when "Don Giovanni," "Die Zauberflote," and the "Requiem," were composed, were the truly brilliant ones. And it may be that the very greatness came, in some measure, from the sorrow and pain ; that Mozart, like so many others of the world's great singers, " learnt in suffering what he taught in song." On his return to Munich, after composing a comic opera in the Italian style, " La Finta Giardiniera," which had a great success, young Mozart, who had been very shabbily treated by Archbishop Hieronymus — of whose spiteful conduct we shall hear more hereafter — the successor of Sigismund, determined to resign his situation in the court band, and to set out on his travels again, giving concerts from place to place, and everywhere looking out for some suitable appointment that might afford him a permanent income. This time his father was refused
