wrongs, through long years of mental conflict. A nature so strong and kindly as that of Bach could not be crushed in such ways. But with characters of less force the consequences are more cruel. I have known an instance of life-long injury from such an act as this. An elder brother gave a younger a book; then, as soon as the child became deeply interested in reading it, tore out two or three leaves. Years after the blood boiled, and the eyes wept bitter tears of distrust in human sympathy, at remembrance of this little act of wanton wrong. And the conduct of Bach's brother is more coldly cruel.
The facts of his life are simple. Soon his great abilities displayed themselves, so as to win for him all that he asked from life, a moderate competency, a home, and a situation in which he could cultivate his talents with uninterrupted perseverance. A silent happiness lit up his days, deliberately, early he grew to giant stature, deeply honoured wherever known, only not more widely known because indifferent to being so. No false lure glitters on his life from any side. He was never in a hurry, nor did he ever linger on the syren shore, but passed by, like Orpheus, not even hearing their songs, so rapt was he in the hymns he was singing to the gods.
Haydn is the untouched green forest in the fulness of a June day; Handel the illuminated garden, where splendid and worldly crowds pause at times in the dark alleys, soothed and solemnized by the white moonlight; with Mozart the nightingale sings, and the lonely heron waves his wings, beside the starlit, secret lake, on whose bosom gazes the white marble temple. Bach is the towering, snowy mountain, “itself earth's Rosy Star,” and the green, sunny, unasking valley, all in one. Earth and heaven are not lonely while such men live to answer to their meaning.
I had marked many passages which give a clear idea of Bach's vast intellectual comprehension, of the happy balance between
