MENDELSSOHN 3'29 poet, being associated with him in the direction of the theatre. Things, however, did not go on very smoothly there. Mendelssohn found all the many worries of theatrical management — the engagement of singers and musicians, the dissensions to be arranged, the many tastes to be conciliated — too irksome, and he did not 'ong retain this appointment ; but the life among his friends at Dusseldorf was most delightful, and the letters written at this time are exceedingly lively and gay. It was here that he received the commission from the Caecilia-Verein of Frankfort for, and commenced, his grand oratorio " St. Paul." The words for this, as also for the " Elijah " and " Hymn of Praise " afterward, he selected him- self with the help of his friend Schubung, and they are entirely from the Bible — as he said, " The Bible is always the best of all." Circumstances prevented the oratorio being then produced at Frankfort, and the first public performance took place at the Lower Rhine Festival at Dusseldorf, in May, 1836. But his visits to Frankfort had a very important result in another way. Men- delssohn there met Mademoiselle Cecile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a pastor of the French Reformed Church, and, though he had frequently indulged in the admiration of beautiful and clever women — which is allowable, and indeed an absolute necessity for a poet ! — now for the first time he fell furiously in plain un- mistakable and downright love. But it is more characteristic of the staid Teuton than the impulsive musician, that before plighting his troth to her he went away for a month's bathing at Scheveningen, in Holland, for the purpose of testing the strength of his affection by this absence. On his return, finding his amatory pulse still beating satisfactorily, he proposed to the young lady, and, as it must be pre- sumed that she had already made up her own mind without any testing, he was accepted. On March 28, 1837, they were married, and the wedded life that then began was one of pure, unclouded happiness to the very end. Cecile Mendels- sohn was a beautiful, gentle-hearted, and loving wife, just the one to give a weary and nervous artist in the home-life, with herself and the children near him, the blessed solace of rest and calm that he so needed. It is thus that Edward Dev- rient, the great German actor, and one of Mendelssohn's most intimate friends, describes her : " Cecile was one of those sweet womanly natures whose gentle simplicity, whose mere presence, soothed and pleased. She was slight, with feat- ures of striking beauty and delicacy ; her hair was between brown and gold, but the transcendent lustre of her great blue eyes, and the brilliant roses of her cheeks, were sad harbingers of early death. She spoke little, and never with animation, in a low, soft voice. Shakespeare's words, " My gracious silence," applied to he>- no less than to the wife of Coriolanus. After giving up his official position at Dusseldorf, in 1835, Mendelssohn was invited to become the conductor of the now famous Gewandhaus concerts at Leipsic, a post which he gladly accepted, and which, retained by him for many years, was to be one of the greatest delights of his artistic life. Not only was he loved and appreciated in Leipsic — far more than in Berlin, his own city — but he had here an opportunity of assisting many composers and virtuosi, who otherwise would have sought in vain for a hearing. Thus, after Liszt, when visiting the
