It has been a fearful conflict. What do we not deplore? But, lo! as the infernal volumes roll sluggishly away, as though loth to quit the hateful banquet, high above all an unspeakable orb shines through, the orb of promise and peace. "Ach!" poor man, there is enough, indeed, to root pessimism in thee; evil seems to have nestled in every pore; life seems to try how hard she can make it to live; thou thyself shudderest at thy self; art tortured by appetites, goaded by passions, infested by thoughts, distracted by doubts, almost driven to despair. But, no! do _not_ despair. Progress is slow, but sure. All is justified at last; and higher life lightens in the dawn. Nay, even if thy dearest hope be a dream--that word too great for any mouth, Immortality--be good (great and strong) _here; that_, if not so happy, is a still higher immortality--
"Then what could death do, if thou should'st depart, Leaving thee living in posterity?"
In such a sea of thoughts--such a thousand-path'd forest--does Beethoven's music plunge us; such a branching piece of the Infinite is it. For the rest, apart from ideas and images, the mere notes have an eternal self-charm. Who fore-ordered this collocation and sequence? Who suggested these harmonious mysteries? How minor and major here phrase and fall together! Never did they do so before; rarely will they do so again. Beethoven was a divine kaleidoscope in a divine hand.
The _fugato_ page takes us into another order of ideas. Here it would almost seem as though tragedy, which threatened to take entire possession of the spirits, were shaken off, and cheerful activity resumed. Here we seem to have the chase, or a military _festival_, or the resolute alacrity which precedes a patriotic war. The climax, those _klingende_ concords, in C _alt._, are very fresh and brilliant; and the imitation is a very interesting characteristic bit of Beethoven (proof amongst many that he studied Handel, if he studied anybody); nevertheless, though the resumption of the original inspired motive is simply grand (peculiar to Beethoven), a slightly uncomfortable feeling is occasioned by this music, in juxtaposition with its predecessor. A certain violence seems done to us; we feel "Is not this rather an incongruous intercalation?" Contrast it certainly is, and excellent in itself; but, had it not been better to have left it out altogether? nay, to have been content with the wonderful allegro as it stood--in those continent bars sublime, and not to be eclipsed. Are we not here too suddenly transported from sub-tropical to temperate zone; or, rather, from some undiscovered inter-world, where is the highest discourse on the