Prime favourite at Court, he was at once practical and idealistic, posing at Court as a dreamer, a dandy, a virtuoso; but at the same time watching his monetary advantages outside the palace gates. Had he survived the terrible reverses of his imperial patroness he might, through stress of ill-fortune, have risen to truly great heights as a virtuoso. As it was, the gilded success in which he basked enervated both moral and mental powers; and one June day in 1869 the Empress heard with genuine sorrow of the sudden death of her favourite while on a visit to London—a regret soon forgotten in the sorrows which quickly gathered around her own happy days, bowing that lovely head for ever beneath the heaviest cross yet meted out to royal wife and motherhood.

OLE BULL

1810-1880

N the Opera House of a great Western city spread along the banks of the Ohio, or 'yellow waters,' as the Indian lore picturesquely termed that noble river, a child sat one night entranced beneath the spell of a musician's bow. Visions of the fjord and rushing waters, pineembowered valleys, and frost-gemmed glittering peaks of snow in the far-away land of the midnight sun, filled that childish fancy, till the young heart beat with indefinable pleasure, and the tiny hands kept unconscious time to the rhythm of those sweet, powerful, absorbing strains, little thinking to those small hands. would one day be relegated the happy mission of recording the wonderful genius, the masterly art of the majestic old man, silver-crowned and bearing his sixty years with the youthful air of one of his own Norse gods, as he stood erect and alone in the middle of the great stage.

Melody, now passionate and tender, exultant,

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jubilant, then soft and low, sinking into mournful cadences, finally lost in sobbing chords of the minor, welled up from the bosom of the violin poised like the flight of a bird on the broad shoulders of the master-his tall form swaying beneath the inspiration of his theme; his head thrown back; the strong features aglow as with an inward fire; the clear blue eyes gazing straight ahead, as though penetrating space and distance, seeing again the dear old Norseland, climbing the cliffs and fording the cataract, revelling in the hardy sports of the North, the home-coming after the chase for the gallant boar, the sweet hour of eventide amid the warmth and gentle cheer of the fireside, the song, the wassail, and the ruddy glow illuminating, glorifying the loved face of sister, wife, and mother: all these visions enhancing the richness of his strains, the pathos of his melody, as, pure and sweet as the flow of his own beloved fjords, gushes forth the music of his native land, the quaint and fascinating airs of Norway. Perchance amid that vast audience listening in breathless silence to those wonderful strains no heart beat faster, no eyes gazed more mistily across the glittering horseshoes of the footlights, than those of that child whose young soul drank for the first time of the magical

draught of music presented by the hand of genius, and whose innocent fancy first learned to plume its wings and soar aloft into the sacred realms of poetry and song led by the sound of a bow, the harmony of a string, and the wondrous art of Ole Bull.

The warm-blooded sons of the South may intone melodies voluptuous in their beauty and rhythm as the palms and wine-laden vines of their sunny soil; but to the son of the North the songs of the ice-bound fastnesses, the chant of the cataract's rushing waters, the deep boom of the glacier's slide, the rattling fusilade of hail and thunderstorm, evoke a melody as passionate, as sublime, nay, grander in its ferocity, its utter abandonment to the forces of Nature, than all the wine-inspired, the sun-created inspirations of the South. The burn of içe equals that of fire, and the traveller lost in the frozen drifts of the snow sinks into the arms of Death with as voluptuous a warmth as ever that bestowed on the poppy-steeped dreamer of the South. Hence we have received from the chilly shores of the Norseman sons and daughters of Poetry and Song, Music and the Drama, endowed with the rare gift of spirituality whereby they conquer the soul while subduing the senses.

Paganini, that glorious master of the most

divine of instruments, never evoked more pure and more heavenly strains than the young Norseman whom he hesitated not, with the generosity of genius, to take by the hand and hail as a worthy disciple of the godlike art of the violin.

Ole Bull was born on the 5th of February 1810, in the quaint old seaport town of Bergen. Nestled in the lap of seven mountains on one side, and rolling away to the sea on the other, the lovely valley formed by the slope of those rugged mountains was not only peopled by worthy citizens, but was the birthplace of many a famous Norseman. Young Ole came of worthy stock, a race combining varied gifts, as we find that on the maternal side he was descended from the poet Edmond Storm, and on the paternal from a goodly array of clever folk representing science, art, and commerce. From the earliest years of his life he evinced a remarkable predilection for music, a most wonderful instinctive understanding of the laws of harmony, of which we may read a quaint illustration in the charming book of memoirs written by his wife, Sara C. Bull.

Uncle Jens, she tells us, was a lover of the violoncello, and also a collector of instruments. The worthy uncle delighted to amuse himself