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Compensation, or, Always a future. Brewster, Anne M. H. (Anne Maria Hampton), (b. 1818.).
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COMPENSATION OR, ALWAYS A FUTURE.

BY

ANNE M. H. BREWSTER.

"In the pleasant orchard closes, 'God bless all our gains,' say we; But, 'May God bless all our losses!' Better suits with our degree. Listen, gentle—ay, and simple!— Listen, children on the knee!" ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1860.
page: -iii[View Page -iii]

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE.

I SHOULD have no need to write a preface, if I had not some explanations to make to my musical reader. The counsels to teachers, and the analytical descriptions of some of the compositions of those great masters, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin, which this book contains, are not given presumptuously on my own opinion solely. Although I have enjoyed valuable opportunities of musical culture, not only from artists as masters, but from artists as friends, having listened to fine instrumentalists in their hours of leisure, and thus formed my taste and opinions; I have also studied very closely the writings of those excellent critical authors, Berlioz, De Lanz, Oulibicheff, Liszt, Scudo, and others. I am sorry we have not such writers on musical æsthetics in English; and still more sorry that translations of their masterly works, so useful to the musical student, could not be given to the public. But after seeing a cultivated woman spend her time in translating that exquisite and difficult book, "Liszt's Chopin," just for the pure love of art, with the hope of being useful to the musical scholar, and then knowing that her fine, conscientious translation traveled from publisher to publisher, each one, shrugging his shoulders, saying, "the book is clever, but will not sell," I thought it would be labor lost to give the time I have devoted to the construction of this book to the translation of even one of those valuable works; but, wherever I could use their excellent counsel, or give their technical analysis, I have done so. To Berlioz, De Lanz, and Liszt, particularly, I refer my readers, that they may see how useful such works are to the musical student.

I wish I could now mention also my artist friends, in acknowledgement of the valuable service they have rendered me; but I page: iv-v[View Page iv-v] cannot with delicacy. However, those of them whose characters and genius have served me as originals—as life-studies for the artists, which I have, with my weak pencil, striven to paint here in my book—are not only gifted, but young; the artist world may yet hear of them; and as great a future may be before them as I have, in my fiction, given to Marie Merle, Ehrenherz, and Henzler.

And now, a word for my poor little fiction itself. Mrs. Norton sang, to an ugly child,—
  • "The loved are lovely, so art thou to me,
  • Child, in whose face strange eyes no beauty see."
And thus I feel toward this little book. I commenced it at a season of great sadness—at a period when the very ground on which I stood seemed reeling. Old ties were rent asunder, old faiths, old hopes; all I had lived, loved, and prayed for, swept from me; links severed, never to be clasped together in this state of being. To keep my sorrow from feeding on me, I gave my "serpent a file." The world has nothing to do with all this; but my little public may look more favorably on my book-child when they know what an angel of blessing it has proved to me. It has done its duty well; it has cheered me when hopeless; given me fresh spring and impulse when failing health and morbid spirits refused their aid. Now its work is finished with me. It will go out into the world to take its chance by the side of lovelier and cleverer ones. I have done all I can for it in return for its good done to me. I am only sorry that my doing has been so weak.

CONTENTS.

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