terrible sum to a frugal German organist
accustomed to count copper pieces. He
wrote home angrily about English ways:

"After deep consideration," he says,
"and many sleepless nights, I am determined
not to bring up my children in so
dangerous a place as London, where people
for the most part have no religion, and
there are scarcely any but bad examples
before their eyes. You would be astonished
to see how children are brought up here—
to say nothing of religion."

So off went the speculator with his
phenomenon to the Hague, urged by the Dutch
ambassador: as the invalid sister of the
Prince of Orange had a vehement desire
to see the child. Things went ill,
nevertheless, in Holland, for the daughter all
but died, and Wolfgang was struck down
by an inflammatory fever. The moment
he recovered, the child was the same
bewitching, loving, light-hearted creature
that he ever had been, always writing
polyglot letters to friends at Salzburg, or
entering with childish enthusiasm into the
acquisition of some new accomplishment.

This great genius died at the age of only
thirty-five years and ten months. He
himself believed that he was poisoned, and
the crime was by many attributed to the
envy of a man named Salieri, his
determined foe. The Zauberflote was nearly
his latest work. On this he laboured
when almost dying, writing amidst
excitement, as was often his wont, and in the
strangest places. The quintet in the first
act was jotted down in a coffee house,
during the intervals in a game of billiards.
During his last illness, when confined to
his bed, he would place his watch by his
side, and follow the performance of this
opera, in his imagination. "Now, the first
act is just over," he would say; "now,
they are singing such an air."

The singular and well-authenticated story
of the Requiem throws almost a supernatural
aspect upon Mozart's last illness. In August
(he died in November) a stranger
brought him an anonymous letter, begging
him to compose a Requiem, on his own
terms. After consulting his wife, as he
always did, Mozart consented to write this
Requiem; pathos and religion seeming to
him adapted to rouse his genius. The
stranger, on a second visit, paid Mozart
twenty-five ducats, half the price he
required: telling him that a present would
be made him when the score should be
complete. Above all, the composer was
not to waste his time in trying to discover
the name of his employer. Soon after that,
Mozart was called to Prague, to compose
La Clemenza di Tito for the Emperor
Leopold's coronation. The mysterious stranger
again appeared as Mozart entered his
travelling carriage, and said, "How will
the Requiem proceed now?" Mozart
apologised, and promised to finish it on his
return. The Clemenza was coldly received,
and Mozart, ill and melancholy, shed tears
when he parted from his Prague friends.
One fine autumn day in the Prater, Mozart,
sitting alone with his wife, began to speak
of his death.

"I am writing that Requiem for myself,"
he said. "I am convinced I cannot last
long. I have certainly been poisoned. I
cannot rid myself of the idea."

By the physician's advice, the Requiem
was taken away from him. When it was
given him back, he grew worse. One night
some musical friends, at his request, sat
round his bed, and sang part of the
Requiem; but at the Lacrymosa Mozart wept
violently, and the score was laid aside. The
Requiem was constantly on his pillow; in
lulls of his illness he gave directions about
orchestral effects to his friend Sussmayer;
even in faint puffs of breath, he tried to
express how the drums should come in, in
a certain part. The very day he died, when
he had exclaimed, "I taste death," he
looked over the Requiem, and added, with
tears in his eyes: "Did I not tell you I
was writing this for myself?"

True to his innate kindness of heart,
Mozart especially desired that his death
might be kept secret for a day from all his
friends save one; this was a friend named
Albrechtsberger, who would thus have a
chance of getting his dead friend's
appointment—the chapel-mastership of Saint
Stephen's.

It is pleasant to be able to associate the
name of Mozart, however slightly, with
two localities in London, already rich in
memories.

             A WINTER VIGIL.

IN the winter of 186— it fell to my lot to
investigate one of the most touching stories
of a white man's endurance and an Indian's
vengeance I ever came across in the whole
North-west. As some of the more curious
portions of the official note-book of an
Indian agent, I transcribe the memoranda
relating to it.

Albert Black was an honest English
gentleman, whose adventures in search of