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Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the
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     LETTERS
     OF
     FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY
     FROM
     ITALY AND SWITZERLAND.

     TRANSLATED BY LADY WALLACE.

     WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
     BY JULIE DE MARGUERITTES.

     [Illustration: logo]

     BOSTON:
     OLIVER DITSON & CO., 277 WASHINGTON STREET.
     NEW YORK: C. H. DITSON & CO.




FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY.


Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born at Hamburg, on the third of
February, 1809. The name to which he was destined to add such
lustre, was already high in the annals of fame. Moses Mendelssohn,
his grandfather, a great Jewish philosopher, one of the most
remarkable men of his time, was the author of profound Metaphysical
works, written both in German and Hebrew. To this great power of
intellect, Moses Mendelssohn added a purity and dignity of
character worthy of the old stoics. The epigraph on the bust of
this ancestor of the composer, shows the esteem in which he was
held by his contemporaries:

"Faithful to the religion of his fathers, as wise as Socrates, like
Socrates teaching the immortality of the soul, and like Socrates
leaving a name that is immortal."

One of Moses Mendelssohn's daughters married Frederick Schlegel,
and swerving from the religion in which both had been brought up,
both became Roman Catholics.

Joseph Mendelssohn, the eldest son of this great old man, was also
distinguished for his literary taste, and has left two excellent
works of very different characters, one on Dante, the other on the
system of a paper currency.

In conjunction with his brother, Abraham, he founded the
banking-house of Mendelssohn & Company at Berlin, still flourishing
under the management of the sons of the original founders, the
brothers and cousins of Felix, the subject of this memoir.

George Mendelssohn the son of Joseph, was also a distinguished
political writer and Professor in the University at Bonn.

With such an array of intellectual ancestry, the Mendelssohn of our
day came into the world at Hamburg, on the third of February,1809.
He was named Felix, and a more appropriate name could not have been
found for him, for in character, circumstance and endowment, he was
supremely happy. Goethe, speaking of him, said "the boy was born on
a lucky day." His first piece of good fortune, was in having not
only an excellent virtuous woman for his mother, but a woman who,
besides these qualities, possessed extraordinary intellect and had
received an education that fitted her to be the mother of children
endowed as hers were. She professed the Lutheran creed, in which
her children were brought up. Being of a distinguished commercial
family and an heiress, her husband added her name of Bartholdy to
his own. Mme. Mendelssohn Bartholdy's other children were, Fanny
her first-born, whose life is entirely interwoven with that of her
brother Felix, and Paul and Rebecca, born some years later.

When yet a boy, Felix removed with his parents to Berlin, probably
at the time of the formation of the banking house. The Prussian
capital has often claimed the honor of being his birthplace, but
that distinction really belongs to Hamburg.

His extraordinary musical talent was not long in developing itself.
His sister Fanny, his "soul's friend" and constant companion,
almost as richly endowed as himself, aroused his emulation, and
they studied music together first as an art, and then as a science,
to be the foundation of future works of inspiration and genius.

Zelter, severe and classic, profoundly scientific, inexorable for
all that was not true science, became the teacher of these two
gifted children in composition and in counterpoint. For piano-forte
playing, Berger was the professor, though some years later
Moscheles added the benefit of his counsels, and Felix was fond of
calling himself the pupil of Moscheles, with whom in after life he
contracted a close friendship. Zelter was exceedingly proud of his
pupil, soon discovering that instead of an industrious and
intelligent child, one of the greatest musical geniuses ever known
was dawning on the world. When he was but fifteen, Zelter took the
young musician to Weimar, and secured for him the acquaintance and
good will of Goethe, which as long as Goethe lived, seemed to be
the necessary consecration of all talent in Germany. By this time
not only was he an admirable performer on the piano, possessed of
a talent for improvisation and a memory so wonderful, that not only
could he play almost all Bach, Haendel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven
by heart, but he could also without hesitation accompany a whole
opera from memory, provided he had but seen the score once. The
overture to Midsummer Night's Dream, so popular now in every
country, was composed before he was seventeen, and was played for
the first time as a duet on the piano by his sister Fanny and
himself on the 19th November, 1826. This is indeed the inspiration
of youth with its brilliancy, its buoyancy, its triumphant joy,
full of the poetry of a young heart, full of the imagination of a
mind untainted by the world. It was not till some years after, that
Mendelssohn completed the music to Shakspeare's great play. In
1827, Felix left the University of Berlin with great honors. He was
a profound classical scholar, and has left as a specimen of his
knowledge, a correct, graceful and elegant translation of Terence's
comedy of Andria, a work greatly approved of by Goethe. He excelled
in gymnastics, was an elegant rider, and like Lord Byron, a bold
and accomplished swimmer. The year he left the University, he went
to England, where Henrietta Sonntag was in the height of her fame.
He played in several