like Isolani, who, at least, did not come with empty hands. These come, for the most part, with empty hearts and empty heads. What is Hecuba to them, or they to Hecuba? Far dearer to me, I confess, is that dingy orchestra, behind whose smoky lamps, among whose greasy pulpits, smudged and soiled with the long, long labor of how many an arduous rehearsal, I recognize the great workshop-the strong furnace, wherein the mighty forces of Music toil and toss, and seethe and heave, till, glowing as with strenuous heat, the molten melodies of golden sound flow smooth into the sweet and stately mould of the Master's noble Thought.

How softly, one by one, and with what thoughtful faces, made melancholy by so much loving labor, enter, each to his nightly station behind his dusky music-desk, the gentle makers of sweet sounds! With what tender care the violin is lifted from its little case! Doubtless the poor fiddler's wife has no such showy satin robe as that from which he fondly unfolds his cherished Cremonese. It must be an Amati. But, soft you! what is that wandering tone, pathetic and yet glad, like the sound of some old fable which we loved to hear when we were children? It is the horn. Thank heaven! the true Waldhorn-no newfangled mechanical cornet-à-pistons. Now the sounds seem straining into unison. You half distinguish faint indications of a coming harmony. Now they fall asunder. All is discord and objurgation. The violin, upon its highest chord, is beginning to confide to the English horn strange news which it has just received under seal of strictest secrecy from the clarionet.

But the bass-viol, with four sharp fifths, breaks in imperative, interrupts the babblers, and severely calls. them back to a sense of duty and responsibility. The drowsy double bass, in lazy mood, as he leans against the wall, begins to clear his throat. The lugubrious bassoon gurgles twenty times over his one poor little part, making the most of himself, like an old operasinger. The trumpet, not having to tune himself, is doing his best to put all his neighbors out of tune. But softly, softly! There sits yonder, by those two brazen bowls, stretched over with dusky parchment, one who seems the master wizard of this wondrous sorcery. His brow is wrinkled into music-scores; his sunken eyes are like two hollow breves; his hair is white and thin. Softly, softly! he taps with muffled wand at the door of the unknown world. And now, sharp through the tuneless tumult, as with a will and a meaning of its own, strikes the shrill, clear, longdrawn, silvery note of the hautboy. Keen-edged and incisive the long note streams, like a sunbeam across the dark, through some chink of a broken wall. And as the dancing motes of golden dust rush into sudden revelation, and begin to waver softly up and down that slant, thin, shining track of light, so now the multitude of foolish notes, smitten by the shrill high note of the hautboy, forthwith enter into the strange significance of that sound, and assume a movement and a meaning not their own.

Reader, this digression is not idle. It closely concerns every incident of this history, throughout which, if you have a musical ear, you who read will recognize again and again, as I who write have been made

to recognize it, that particular, unmistakable note of the hautboy. Certainly the conversation to which I am about to refer was to the full as senseless, and far more insipid, than the fitful sounds from my imaginary orchestra; but throughout every phase of it, constantly recurring, dominating all, giving to words insignificant and idle a singular and sinister significance, clear, cold, uncomfortable, premonitory of things to come, I distinctly distinguished that long sharp note of the hautboy.

For years, too, I have been haunted by the sound of it. For years I have heard it, after long intervals of forgetfulness, at moments when I least expected, and was least prepared to hear it. I hear it now as my memory reverts to past events. Perhaps I shall continue to hear it till I have closed this narrative, which, by its restless recurrence, like an unlaid ghost, it has compelled me to commence.

In the present instance it was but a single word that thus impressed me-a word, too, so hackneyed and familiar that I can not account for the strangely unfamiliar sensation with which it affected me.

And what was that word, do you ask?

It was the name of the Loreley.

CHAPTER II.

THE LORELEY.-STRANGE CONDUCT OF A GENTLEMAN IN BLACK.

THE two small cannons with which, soon after starting, we had saluted the Rheinstein, had long since been charged again, and we were now approaching the spot where they were to enable our little craft to do due honor to her mysterious godmother, the celebrated Loreley. The prospect of so soon passing the abode of that famous enchantress had probably led my fellow-travelers into a discussion of the peculiar character assigned to her by the various legends of which she is the heroine.

A sentimental young lady with a fat waxen face and flat flaxen hair, whose affected accent was of pure Berlin quality, had enthusiastically undertaken (no doubt in the conviction that she was thereby vindicating the cause of sentiment and sensibility) the defense of those anthropophagal tendencies attributed to that melodious Lady Witch, who, to the great detriment of the musical public of former times, is well known to have been in the habit of terminating her concerts by drowning her auditory. This romantic young lady expatiated with so much gusto upon the exquisite poetry and refinement of those very objectionable proceedings on the part of the Loreley, that we all felt persuaded, if she could have sat upon a rock and sung

Kuken* songs, that the whole of the Prussian army would be forced to take swimming lessons. A slim sub-lieutentant, however, who was there on the way to his garrison at Cologne, appeared to be greatly scandalized by the thought of the disadvantageous and ungraceful position in which the lords of the creation would be placed when thus compelled to become the ungainly imitators of the four-handed frog. He vehemently objected to the conduct of the Loreley in former times. For his part, he avowed, he had no taste for that antiquated ballad-singer, whose behavior had been simply abominable, and could only have been tolerated under a very imperfect state of the criminal code. Such things were, happily, nowadays quite im- * possible. He could see in them nothing at all poetical, but much that infringed the police regulations. Any person capable of calmly contemplating the agonies of a drowning man was neither more nor less than a criminal of the worst description, who ought to be-not applauded, but hanged.

Here the conversation was suddenly interrupted by a loud clatter. We all turned round, startled and annoyed. Close to the last speaker, a table, before which had been seated a gentleman dressed in black, and of such unobtrusive appearance that, although every body had seen, nobody had noticed him, was now violently overturned and thrown to the ground. It was impossible to suppose, however, that it had been upset by the stranger, who was at that moment walking away with such profound composure that he did not even appear to have noticed the noise which so much

* A once popular composer of sentimental songs in Germany.

B