dian widows used to fling themselves upon account she gives of her first conception of the funeral pyre of their husbands: she has that extraordinary story, when she had rethrown upon that of hers her mode of tired to rest, her fancy heated by hearing thought, her mould of style, her creed, her ghost tales; and when the whole circumheart, her all. Her admiration of Shelley stances of the story appeared at once before was, and is, an idolatry. Can we wonder at her eye, as in a camera obscura? It is it? Separated from him in the prime of life, ever thus, we imagine, that truly original with all his faculties in the finest bloom of conceptions are produced. They are cast promise, with peace beginning to build in-not wrought. They come as wholes, and the crevices of his torn heart, and with fame hovering ere it stooped upon his head -separated, too, in circumstances so sudden and cruel-can we be astonished that from the wounds of love came forth the blood of worship and sacrifice? Wordsworth speaks of himself as feeling for not in parts. It was thus that Tam o' Shanter completed, along Burns' mind, his weird and tipsy gallop in a single hour. Thus Coleridge composed the outline of his "Ancient Marinere," in one evening walk near Nether Stowey. So rapidly rose "Frankenstein," which, as Moore well remarks, has been one of those striking conceptions which take hold of the public mind at once and for ever. The theme is morbid and disgusting enough. The story is that of one who finds "The Old Sea some reverential fear." But in the mind of "Mary" there must lurk a feeling of a still stronger kind toward that element which he, next to herself, had of all things most passionately loved-out the principle of life, constructs a monwhich he trusted as a parent-to which he exposed himself, defenceless (he could not swim, he could only soar)-which he had sung in many a strain of matchless sweetness, but which betrayed and destroyed him-how can she, without horror, hear the boom of its waves, or look without a shudder, either at its stormy or at its smiling countenance? What a picture she presents to our imagination, running with dishevelled hair, along the sea shore, questioning all she met if they could tell her of her husband-nay, shrieking out the dreadful question to the surges, which, like a dumb murderer, had done the deed but could not utter the confession! Mrs. Shelley's genius, though true and powerful, is monotonous and circumscribed -more so than even her father's-and, in this point, presents a strong contrast to her husband's, which could run along every note of the gamut-be witty or wild, satirical or sentimental, didactic or dramatic, epic or lyrical, as it pleased him. She has no wit, nor humor-little dramatic talent. Strong clear description of the gloomier scenes of nature, or the darker passions of the mind, or of those supernatural objects which her fancy, except in her first work, somewhat laboriously creates, is her forte. Hence her reputation still rests upon "Frankenstein;" for her "Last Man," "Perkin Warbeck," &c., are far inferior, if not entirely unworthy of her talents. She unquestionably made him; but, like a mule or a monster, he has had no progeny. Can any one have forgot the interesting strous being, who, because his maker fails in forming a female companion to him, ultimately murders the dearest friend of his benefactor, and, in remorse and despair, disappears amid the eternal snows of the North Pole. Nothing more preposterous than the meagre outline of the story exists in literature. But Mrs. Shelley deserves great credit, nevertheless. In the first place, she has succeeded in her delineation; she has painted the shapeless being upon the imagination of the world for ever; and beside Caliban, and Hecate, and Death in Life, and all other weird and gloomy creations, this nameless, unfortunate, involuntary, gigantic unit stands. To succeed in an attempt so daring, proves at once the power of the author, and a certain value even in the original conception. To keep verging perpetually on the limit of the absurd, and to produce the while all the effects of the sublime, this takes and tasks very high faculties indeed. Occasionally, we admit, she does overstep the mark. Thus the whole scene of the monster's education in the cottage, his overhearing the reading of the "Paradise Lost," the "Sorrows of Werter," &c., and in this way acquiring knowledge and refined sentiments, seems unspeakably ridiculous. A Caco-demon weeping in concert with Eve or Werter is too ludicrous an idea-as absurd as though he had been represented as boarded at Capsicum Hall. But it is wonderful how delicately and gracefully Mrs. Shelley has managed the whole prodigious business. She touches pitch with a lady's glove, and is not defiled. From a whole forest of the "nettle danger," she extracts a sweet and plentiful supply of the "flower safety." With a fine female footing, she preserves the narrow path which divides the terrible from the disgusting. She unites, not in a junction of words alone, but in effect, the "horribly beautiful." Her monster is not only as Caliban appeared to Trinculo-a very pretty monster-but somewhat poetical and pathetic withal. You almost weep for him in his utter insulation. Alone dread word, though it were to be alone in heaven! Alone! word hardly more dreadful if it were to be alone in hell! "Alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea; Thus wrapt around by his loneliness, as by a silent burning chain, does this gigantic creature run through the world, like a lion who has lost his mate, in a forest of fire, seeking for his kindred being, but seeking for ever in vain. He is not only alone, but alone because he has no being like him throughout the whole universe. What a solitude within a solitude!-solitude comparable only to that of the Alchemist in St. Leon, when he buries his last tie to humanity in his wife's grave, and goes on his way, "friendless, friendless, alone, alone." What a scene is the process of his creation, and especially the hour when he first began to breathe, to open his ill-favored eyes, and to stretch his ill-shapen arms, toward his terrified author, who, for the first time, becomes aware of the enormity of the mistake he has committed; who has had a giant's strength, and used it tyrannously like a giant, and who shudders and shrinks back from his own horrible handiwork! It is a type, whether intended or not, of the fate of genius, whenever it dares either to revile, or to resist, the common laws and obligations, and conditions of man and the universe. Better, better far be blasted with the lightnings of heaven, than by the recoil, upon one's own head, of one false, homeless, returning, revenging thought. ment of a fear which all have felt, who have found themselves alone among such desolate regions. Who has not at times trembled lest those ghastlier and drearier places of nature, which abound in our own Highlands, should bear a different progeny from the ptarmigan, the sheep, the raven, or the eagle-lest the mountain should suddenly crown itself with a Titanic spectre, and the mist, disparting, reveal demoniac forms, and the lonely moor discover its ugly dwarf, as if dropped down from the overhanging thunder cloud-and the forest of pines show unearthly shapes sailing among their shades and the cataract overboil with its own wild creations? Thus fitly, amid scenery like that of some dream of nightmare, on a glacier as on a throne, stands up before the eye of his own maker, the miscreation, and he cries out, "Whence and what art thou, execrable shape ?" In darkness and distance, at last, the being disappears, and the imagination dares hardly pursue him as he passes amid those congenial shapes of colossal size, terror, and mystery, which we fancy to haunt those outskirts of existence, with, behind them at midnight, "all Europe and Asia fast asleep, and before them the silent immensity and Palace of the Eternal, to which our sun is but a porch-lamp." Altogether, the work is wonderful as the work of a girl of eighteen. She has never since fully equalled or approached its power, nor do we ever expect that she shall. One distinct addition to our original creations must be conceded her and it is no little praise; for there are few writers of fiction who have done so much out of Germany. What are they, in this respect, to our painters to Fuseli, with his quaint brain, so prodigal of unearthly shapes-to John Martin, who has created over his head a whole dark_frowning, but magnificent world-or to David Scott, our own most cherished friend, in whose studio, while standing surrounded by pictured poems of such startling originality, such austere selection of theme, and such solemn dignity of treatment (forgetting not himself, the grave, mild, quiet, shadowy enthusiast, with his slow, deep, sepulchral tones), you are almost tempted to exclaim, "How dreadful is this place!" Scarcely second to her description of the moment when, at midnight, and under the light of a waning moon, the monster was Of one promised and anticipated task born, is his sudden apparition under a gla- we must, ere we close, respectfully remind cier among the high Alps. This scene Mrs. Shelley; it is of the life of her husstrikes us the more, as it seems the fulfil-band. That, even after Captain Med wyn's recent work, has evidently yet to be understands him; she alone fully knows the written. No hand but hers can write it particulars of his outer and inner history; well. Critics may anatomize his qualities- and we hope and believe, that her biograshe only can paint his likeness. In pro-phy will be a monument to his memory, as claiming his praise, exaggeration in her lasting as the Euganean hills; and her will be pardoned; and in unveiling his lament over his loss as sweet as the everfaults, tenderness may be expected from lasting dirge, sung in their "late remorse her; she alone, we believe, after all, fully of love," by the waters of the Italian sea. From Fraser's Magazine. THE death of Dr. Mendelssohn, in the reluctantly accepted, or absolutely refused. early part of the last month, is one of the It is true that, after a career of some twenty most melancholy casualities that have oc- years before the public, applause was not to curred in the musical art for a long time. seek; he had exhibited marvels of facility We naturally forget how many similar and as concerto and extempore player on the sudden experiences have suggested the usual organ and piano-forte, and amidst such reflections on the uncertainty of life, and frenzied plaudits, that the intoxicating the vanity of human wishes, in the sight of draught of youthful ambition may have a young composer invested with all the lost its stimulus. Like some other heroes, goods of fortune; the spectacle of artist- however, he also may have found perpetual existence in a favorite of the public is so ani- glory of itself an accumulating and intoleramated that we confer a kind of immortality ble weight, and that a great name and upon it, and remove into hazy obscurity figure in the eye of the world are dearly and the dim vista of the future the last and purchased by constant toil and responsigreatest of evils. But surely the recollec- bility. He may have wished to anticipate tion of C. M. von Weber, carried off in the the honorable repose of age in consideration first acclamation of his triumph among us, of the more than double duty of his youth and of the early doom of Bellini, the most having in his various capacities of cominventive melodist and dramatic genius of poser, concerto player, extempore player, modern Italy, with numerous promising and conductor of an orchestra, acquitted names in the humbler ranks of art, should himself with a distinction unparalleled, teach us our error in wilfully excepting save by Mozart. Possibly, too, he found a genius from the influence of the ordinary rule of human instability. When a composer fulfils the arduous duties and complicated responsibilities of Mendelssohn, he attains the giddiest height of prosperity and applause, with proportionate danger to health and life; and now that the melancholy event is passed, we begin to look into its prognostics. decline of the physical power necessary to contend with the daily exigencies of his. position. At any rate, his appearance in the orchestra, when last we saw him at the Philharmonic Society, did not betray the fatal secret. Those who saw Mendelssohn on that brilliant occasion, honored by the presence of the Queen, revelling in his favorite Pianoforte Concerto-Beethoven's We remember that, of late, he was soli- in G--with all the playful grace, the ease, citous rather to avoid engagements than to and conscious mastery that communicated accept them; that he would not conduct the their peculiar charms to the performance, Leipsic subscription concerts this year; can scarcely have anticipated that, in a few that he was often with difficulty induced to short months, the player and his piece play; and that he found himself physically would become alike food for history. That incompetent to cope with the weight of the those inconceivably rapid and elastic finBirmingham organ at the last festival. gers, whose "artful and unimaginable What he had formerly undertaken with touches " created the uproar af enthusiasm cheerful and ready compliance, he now in the concert-room, should not delight us from season to season, for a course of these united for him in such a measure, years, seemed impossible. Never was a that until the fairies again assemble round man so "booked" in public expectation the cradle of a child with their good gifts, for long prosperity. Removed from envy, we shall look in vain for a similar picture rivalry, and detraction, in the possession of happy artist boyhood. Mendelssohn of an ample fortune, he had nothing to do was born at Hamburgh, Feb. 3, 1809. His but to live; to live was to flourish, and to father, a distinguished merchant at Berlin, perform what was easy to him. found in that city the best materials for the Such was the promising aspect in which musical and intellectual cultivation of his Dr. Mendelssohn appeared in the lighted son. We are strongly reminded of the hisevening concert-room to his admiring tory of the Mozart family in the infant muaudience. By daylight, and in closer sical promise of Mendelssohn and his elder contiguity, the spectator was struck by sister, almost his rival in skill, who always a certain appearance of premature age accompanied him in his tastes, and whom, which his countenance exhibited; he by a remarkable fatality and coincidence in seemed already to have outstretched the the mortal attack, he has this year accomnatural term of his existence by at least ten panied to the tomb. In the case of the years. No one, judging by the lines in his children of M. Mendelssohn, the mother, face, would have guessed his age to be however, was the good genius who chiefly thirty-nine only. The disproportion be- influenced their musical progress. This tween his actual age and the character of lady was herself an excellent practical muhis face was especially noticed at the morn-sician, formed in the schools of Sebastian and ing "Homage to Mendelssohn," performed Emanuel Bach; and not only did she apin Harley Street by the Beethoven Quartet preciate the works of these models of musiSociety. Here he was gay and animated, cal science, but their utility in developing and played delightfully; but, to the sur-the musical dispositions of the young. Her prise of close observers, was no longer a example is worthy of imitation. She comyoung man. He had compressed a great menced with lessons of five minutes' duradeal of life into a short compass, and tion, gradually extending them; and so wanted a stronger physical constitution to rapid was the child's progress under her support the throes of perpetual invention, tuition, that by his eighth year he mastered and the excitement consequent on his ele- with ease, passages requiring a very skilful vated position. He was conscientious in execution. At this tender age, he was also fulfilling what he owed to his art, and to the able to transpose the pieces in Cramer's public who cherished him; he sought to studio, and to play from the scores of Bach confirm "golden opinions" by the most at sight. His ear readily detected fifths generous efforts, and in the end may almost and other inaccuracies in counterpoint. be described as "killed by kindness." The He discovered an error of this sort which path of genius will always be chivalrous had previously escaped detection in a motet from its self-sacrificing ambition; and if the by Bach. The precocity which he displayed cold neglect of the last century, and the excited general admiration; and the masters eager patronage of the present, produce like who successively assisted in his musical eduresults to the composer, society has at least cation were fully persuaded that they were advanced in granting the artist during his rearing another Mozart. lifetime the full content of appreciation and sympathy. Louis Berger, of Berlin, succeeded the mother of Mendelssohn as his musical inThe prosperous course of Felix Mendels- structor; and, subsequently, the boy, tosohn from infancy to maturity will always gether with his sister, took lessons of any remain a bright and pleasant dream for art- famous master who happened to be sojournists in this contentious world. The advanta-ing in Berlin, thus appropriating the differges of a good position by birth; of possessing a name already celebrated in the walks of literature and philosophy; of musical parents, who quickly discerned the bent of his genius, and who spared no pains in developing it; of early intercourse with men of remarkable endowments, from whom he imbibed the tastes natural to intellectual pre-eminence and refined education-all! ent excellencies of many artists, Hummel, Moscheles, &c. The musical capacities of these accomplished children are described as nearly equal; a generous emulation prevailed between them; sometimes the brother was in advance, sometimes the sister. A life-long, profound sympathy and attachment, grew out of their common musical studies; and to appreciate the beauty of the "Like fortunes did their souls acquaint." The steps by which the youthful artist accomplished that complete readiness of eye and hand, of musical intellect and ear, which rendered him as a practical musician the wonder of our age, are obvious. Difficulty had at length no place in his vocabulary; he had learned to anticipate all the combinations of pianoforte music; and his early industry so far, of late, superseded the necessity of practice, that he has been known to play both the organ and pianoforte in public after intermitting practice for months. He sustained to the end all the assaults of the most inveterate me chanism; and, with Liszt and Thalberg in the field, was incontestibly the first pianoforte player of his day. Music, whose true votary he was, never deserted him, and taught the most industrious saloon players, when he was present, to know their place. The plan pursued to form young Mendelssohn as a composer was directed also by great intelligence. He had been placed for this branch of art under Zetter, of the singing academy, a thoughtful master, and the correspondent of Goethe; and Zetter thought too highly of his charge to fetter his genius by scholastic rules. The exercises he made under Zetter were chiefly little symphonies in four parts, for stringed instruments, in composing which he followed struments, in composing which he followed the bent of his genius. After what fancy and imagination had achieved for the music of modern Germany, it was feared that systems might stifle some important poetical new birth. In spite of the license to run wild, order, clearness, and regularity, still distinguished the productions of the student, and were the index to the character of his mind. The domestic musical habits of Mendelssohn's family were still more happily disposed to excite his enthusiasm for composition than the approbation and encouragement of his preceptor. Every fortnight, there was a concert at the Mendelssohns, at which a quartet of good artists performed a variety of classical compositions, and together with them the last new symphony of "Felix." What an adcomposer was never before nursed in such vantage this! Surely the music of young softness and delight, amid such kind family sympathy and so much encouragement from he was not only the greatest player of the musicians. By the time he reached twenty, day, but the character of his compositions entitled him to occupy that place in the interest of the public which Beethoven and Weber had not long resigned. Before his first published works, two pianoforte quartets, had reached us his name and promise dium of foreign musical journals, and the were familiar in England through the meconnections of the British embassy at Berlin. His first English associations were, Austin then resident in that city; and probably, formed at the parties of Mrs. when he arrived in this country (in 1829), he still lived in great intimacy with her to verify the prepossessions of his admirers, family. prodigious powers as Mendelssohn exhibitBut there wanted no protection for such ed at twenty years of age, when his first symphony was introduced at the Philhar We monic Concerts. He was received with here is rarely much regarded in the highest open arms; and though the highest art self peculiarly to royal favor. The effect society, he, in the end, recommended himof his first appearance in England was strongly assisted by circumstances. were then first making their true impression ber's overtures and Beethoven's symphonies at the Philharmonic, and the public, in a transport of enthusiasm, were just awakening to a due sense of the loss of those masThe memory of this lady was as wonderful as ters, when the youth stepped forward who that of her brother. On her father's birthday, she was to wield the mighty implements of their once performed, as a surprise to him, an incredible art. Still, it was not merely by his early feat, namely, of playing, by memory, the whole of and profound mastery of the mechanism the forty-eight preludes and fugues of Sebastian Bache. The recollection of a fugue implies that of and poetry of composition that Menthe entire movement of its parts, and its difficulty delssohn made such rapid progress in the can be appreciated only by experiment. It is a cer- affections of the English; his extraordi tain test of musical mind. We shall now also be come acquainted with some of Madame Henvel's nary personal endowments, in which fine compositions, which are of similar texture to her playing, an intuitive kind of musical leadbrother's. ing, a vast memory, which embraced the |