The last chapter of a record of holidays., each one of which has been marked with some new pleasure, is of itself a mournful one to write. It becomes doubly so, when its subject is a last meeting with one whose death in the prime of every blessing which makes life desirable has stripped holiday-time to come of its freshest musical interest and chiefest hope. There are many besides myself to whom Germany and German music are gravely, perhaps irreparably, changed by the untimely death of Mendelssohn.

I passed the three last days of August, 1847, beside him at Interlachen in Switzerland, very shortly before his return to Leipsic, and that fatal attack of illness which ended in his death there on the fourth of November. He looked aged and sad;–and stooped more than I had ever before seen him do; but his smile had never been brighter, nor his welcome more cordial. It was early in the morning of as sunny and exhilarating a day as ever shone on Switzerland, that we got to Interlachen ; and then and there I must see the place and its beauties.–“ We can talk about our business better out of the house:” – and forth we went, – at first up and down under the walnut trees, in sight of the Jungfrau, until, by degrees, the boarding-houses began to turn out their inhabitants.