MOZART.

IT has been maintained that the "infant prodigy," as a rule, fails to make good in later years the promises of early youth; but the career of Mozart illustrates a noteworthy and brilliant exception. In his case the most remarkable musical precocity ripened into the finest and most versatile genius, and his continued fertility of invention proved a fount of increasingly beautiful melody to the day of his death.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born January 27, 1756. He began to play upon the harpsichord when not yet four years of age, attempted composition in his fifth year, and in 1762 he and his sister Marianne began their musical tours with their father, Johann Georg Leopold Mozart. In Vienna, especially, were their performances attended with great success at the court of the emperor, Francis I. Little "Wolferl," with his innocent and natural manners, showed not the least embarrassment in the presence of the great people he met. (It may be remarked here, parenthetically, that Mozart retained thoughout his life his simple, natural manners. A childlike faith, a healthy love of humor, sympathy, affection, unbounded animal spirits, these were his prominent characteristics.) In 1763 they left Salzburg again on a tour that took them to the courts of the principal sovereigns of Europe. Wolfgang learned with astonishing facility, and at the age of ten composed, played upon the organ, harpsichord, violin and