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BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.

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Scarcely a year has elapsed since the musical world has been painfully moved by the death of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. No loss, which the divine art has sustained since that of Von Weber, will be so difficult to replace, and probably no man of genius was ever more sincerely mourned, as a man. He not only possessed that universal sympathy with humanity, which is so noble a characteristic of the highest genius, but, unlike many great men, whose very isolation of intellect creates an atmosphere about them which the world is awed from seeking to penetrate, the familiar scope of his warm nature descended to an equality with all he met, and though all who named him as a composer, may not have understood or appreciated him, all who knew him as a man, could not choose but love him. The career of genius, unhappily, is not often surrounded at the onset with the worldly advantages, nor watched and cherished with the fostering care, which fell to his lot. His nature was never embittered by early struggles with an unrecognizing world, nor was his natural faith in man shaken by a keen encounter with selfishness and persecution. The development of his moral nature thus calmly ripened in harmony with his mind, each sustaining and ennobling the other. The contemplation of such a character is in itself exalting, and seems to give his memory a more than ordinary consecration.

At this time, when we are still constantly reminded of his loss—when those to whom his works have a voice and a power never mention his name but with the unconscious sadness of a reverent heart, all which may help to recall his living image possesses a universal interest. I trust, therefore, that the relation of an interview, the recollection of which is among those hours, for whose bestowal I am most grateful to the past, will need no apology. On the contrary, it is rather the discharge of that duty which we owe to art, as all her worshipers will acknowledge.

A winter’s residence in Frankfort, which of late years is somewhat distinguished for the excellence of its opera, and the high degree of culture attained by its various musical unions, sufficed to make me familiar with many of the great works of the German composers. Fortunately, it was not until after I had learned to feel the all-pervading soul of beauty which inspired Mozart, and paused in awe on the borders of Beethoven’s vast and solemn realm, that I heard the music of Mendelssohn. Thus prepared, in part, the simple and severe grandeur of his style impressed me with a consciousness of its power, though I could not always grasp the spirit of the sound, and follow it back to the sublime conception—as, when a schoolboy, I first opened the pages of Milton, and read with wonder and delight what it would have puzzled me exceedingly to explain. Mendelssohn’s music is of a more purely intellectual character than that of any modern composer, and his greatest works are those which but few thoroughly appreciate. While, in his “Songs without Words,” and the simple grandeur of his sacred melodies, he comes nearer to the general sympathy, his “Walpurgisnacht,” and “Fingal’s Cave,” creations of startling power and sublimity, which stand alone in the character of their expression, are rarely produced, except in those German cities where the taste for music has not been led away from the standard set up by the schools of Bach and Hayden, by the voluptuous melodies of the modern Italian opera. Frankfort is one of these cities, and I was fortunate enough to hear the Walpurgisnacht performed by the CÆcilien-Verein, or Society of St. Cecilia. The poetry of Goethe and the music of Mendelssohn!—it was a sublime marriage of genius. The works of the latter are as full of wild and stormy pictures as those of the former, and he has described in music the crags and breakers of the bleak Hebrides, with as much power as Goethe exhibits, in painting the savage scenery of the Brocken.

Mendelssohn was living in Frankfort during the winter I spent there, and I was naturally anxious to see the face of a great man, whom there was no probability of my ever being near again, in the course of my wanderings. One sunny day in March, when all the population of Frankfort seemed to have turned out upon the budding promenades which belt the city, and the broad quays along the Main, to enjoy the first premonition of spring, I went on my usual afternoon stroll with my friend and countryman, W——, whose glowing talk upon the musical art was quite as refreshing to me after the day’s study in the gloomy Marktplotz, as were the blue mountains of Epessart, which are visible from the bridge over the Main.

There had been a great inundation the week previous, and the cold, wintry storms which accompanied it, had just given place to sunshine and milder air. The boatmen upon the flat, clumsy barges which come down from WÜrzburg and the upper Main, were loosening their lashings and preparing to trust themselves upon the swollen waters. The music of Savoyards and bands of mountain singers was heard in every open space, and brave, ruddy-looking Tyrolese, wild-eyed Bohemians in their quaint, national costume, and the men of Suabia and the Black Forest, mingled with the crowd, till it seemed like a holyday assemblage made up from all the German provinces. We threaded the motley multitude, finding a pleasant pastime in reading their faces and costumes, turning rapidly, as it were, the leaves of a historical picture book.

My eye was finally caught by a man who came toward us on the quay, and whose face and air were in such striking contrast to those about him, that my whole attention was at once fixed upon him. He was simply and rather negligently dressed in dark cloth, with a cravat tied loosely about his neck. His beard had evidently not been touched for two or three days, and his black hair was long and frowzed by the wind. His eyes, which were large, dark and kindling, were directed forward and slightly lifted, in the abstraction of some absorbing thought, and as he passed, I heard him singing to himself in a voice deep but not loud, and yet with a far different tone from that of one who hums a careless air as he walks. But a few notes caught my ear, yet I remember their sound, elevated and with that scarcely perceptible vibration which betrays a feeling below the soul’s surface, as distinctly now as at the time. W—— grasped my arm quickly and said in a low voice, “Mendelssohn!” I turned hastily, and looked after him, as he went down the quay, apparently but half conscious of the stirring scenes around him. I could easily imagine how the balmy, indolent sensation in the air, so like a soothing and tranquilizing strain of music, should have led him into the serene and majestic realm of his own creations.

It was something to have seen a man of genius thus alone, and in communion with his inspired thoughts, and I could not repress a feeling of pleasure at the idea of having unconsciously acknowledged the influences around him, before I knew his name. After this passing glimpse, this flash of him, however, came the natural desire to see his features in repose, and obtain some impression of his personal character. An opportunity soon occurred. The performance of his “Walpurgisnacht,” by the CÆcilien-Verein, a day or two thereafter, increased the enthusiasm I had before felt for his works, and full of the recollection of its sublime Druid choruses, I wrote a few lines to him, expressive of the delight they had given me, and of my wish to possess his name in autograph, that I might take to America some token connected with their remembrance. The next day I received a very kind note in reply, enclosing a manuscript score of a chorus from the “Walpurgisnacht.”

Summoning up my courage the next morning, I decided on calling upon him in person, feeling certain, from the character of his note, that he would understand the motive which prompted me to take such a liberty. I had no difficulty in finding his residence in the Bockenheimer Gasse, in the western part of the city. The servant ushered me into a handsomely furnished room, with a carpet, an unusual thing in German houses; a grand piano occupied one side of the apartment. These struck my eye on entering, but my observation was cut short by the appearance of Mendelssohn. A few words of introduction served to remove any embarrassment I might have felt on account of my unceremonious call, and I was soon set entirely at ease by his frank and friendly manner. As he sat opposite to me, beside a small table, covered with articles of vertÙ, I was much struck with the high intellectual beauty of his countenance. His forehead was white, unwrinkled, and expanding above, in the region of the ideal faculties. His eyes were large, very dark and lambent with a light that seemed to come through them—like the phosphorescent gleam on the ocean at midnight. I have observed this peculiar character of the eye only in men of the highest genius—the sculptor Powers is another instance in which it has been frequently remarked. None of the engravings of Mendelssohn which have yet been made give any idea of the kindling effect which is thus given to his face. His nose was slightly prominent, and the traces of his Jewish blood were seen in this, as well as the thin but delicate curve of the upper lip, and the high cheek-bones. Yet it was the Jewish face softened and spiritualized, retaining none of its coarser characteristics. The faces of Jewish youth are of a rare and remarkable beauty, but this is scarcely ever retained beyond the first period of manhood. In Mendelssohn, the perpetual youth of spirit, which is the gift of genius alone, seemed to have kept his features moulded to its expression, while the approach of maturer years but heightened and strengthened its character.

He spoke of German music, and told me I should hear it best performed in Vienna and Berlin. Some remarks on America led him to speak of a grand Musical Festival, which was then in the course of preparation in New York. He had received a letter inviting him to assist in it, and said he would have gladly attended it, but his duty to his family would not permit of his leaving. He appeared to be much gratified by the invitation, not only for the personal appreciation which it implied, but as a cheering sign of progress in the musical art. My friend W——, who had met with Mendelssohn the summer previous, at the baths of Kronthal, said that he had expressed much curiosity respecting the native negro melodies—which, after all, form the only peculiarly national music we possess—and that he considered some of them exceedingly beautiful and original.

I did not feel at liberty to intrude long upon the morning hours of a composer, and took my leave after a short interview. Mendelssohn, at parting, expressed his warm interest in our country’s progress, especially in the refined arts, and gave me a kind invitation to call upon him in whatever German city I should find him. I left Frankfort in two or three weeks after this, and although I was never afterward enabled to fulfill my promise and desire, I was often forcibly reminded of his person and his genius—and never more gratefully than when I stood beside the marble monument to Sebastian Bach, in the promenades of Leipzic—raised to the memory of that patriarch of harmony, by the generosity of Mendelssohn.