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240 will settle once for all the questions so often raised concerning the place and the date of Verdi's birth.

In the long run of Verdi's life—which happily bids fair still to be preserved for an indefinite number of healthy and vigorous years—we do not meet with any startling and romantic incidents: everything seems to have gone with him, though not smoothly, yet with the common sequence of good and bad turns to which all mortals are liable, let their calling and station in life be what they will. Verdi's biography exhibits nothing heroic or startling, as some would have us believe it does. The connecting-link between his life and his works is indissoluble: the man and the artist proceed abreast, hand in hand toward the same goal, impelled and guided by the same sentiments and emotions. 'Homo sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto' is the proper motto for the gate of his villa at S. Agata, and the title-page of each of his works. This 'humanity' of his is the reason and explanation of his life, as well as the key to the perfect understanding of his works, and to their popularity wherever there are ears to hear and hearts to feel.

M. Pougin, who, together with other difficult achievements, has successfully continued Fétis's 'Dictionnaire des Musiciens,' has written a biographical sketch of Verdi in the right spirit, confining himself within the strict limits of the plain facts. Of this sketch an Italian translation was made by a well-known Paris correspondent of the Italian papers, under the nom de plume of 'Folchetto,' with notes and additions, forming altogether a volume of more than 150 pages, full of accurate and valuable information. Through the combined shrewdness and skill of 'Folchetto' and M. Giulio Ricordi we are enabled to present to our readers the most important period of Verdi's career, in words that are almost the great composer's own. A conversation that he had with Giulio Ricordi was by the latter faithfully put on paper the very night following the interview, and sent to 'Folchetto' for publication. Such is the basis of the following article.

Unlike many musicians that have passed their infancy and childhood amongst artistic surroundings, Verdi's musical genius had to fight for its development against many difficulties. Nothing that he could hear or see was fit to give him the slightest hint of anything grand and ideal: the two hundred inhabitants of Le Roncole were poor and ignorant labourers, and the very nature of the country—an immense, flat, monotonous expanse—however gratifying to a landowner, could hardly kindle a spark in the imagination of a poet. Carlo Verdi and his wife Luigia Verdi Utini kept a small inn at Le Roncole, and in addition a little shop, where sugar, coffee, matches, tobacco, spirits, and clay pipes were sold at retail. Once a week the good Carlo walked up to Busseto with two empty baskets, and returned with them full of articles of his trade, carrying them on his strong shoulders for all the three miles of the dusty and sunny way. His purchases were chiefly made from a M. Barezzi, dealer in spirits, drugs, and spices, a prosperous and hearty man who was destined to serve as a bridge to Giuseppe Verdi over many a chasm in his glorious way.

Giuseppe, though good and obedient, was rather of a melancholy character, never joining his playmates in their noisy amusements; one thing only, we are told, could rouse him from his habitual indifference, and that was the occasional passing through the village of a grinding organ: to the child who in after years was to afford an inexhaustible répertoire to those instruments for half-a-century all over the world, this was an irresistible attraction—he could not be kept indoors, and would follow the itinerant player as far as his little legs could carry him. This slight hint of his musical aptitude must have been accompanied by others which the traditions of Le Roncole have not transmitted, since we know that even in early childhood the boy was possessed of a spinet. For an innkeeper of Le Roncole, in 1820, to buy a spinet for his child to play on, is an extravagance which we could hardly credit if the author of 'Aida' had not preserved to this day the faithful companion of his childhood. M. Ghislanzoni, who saw it at S. Agata, thus speaks of it:—

a quaint inscription which cannot be translated literally:—

How the spinet happened to be in such a condition as to require the workmanship of M. Cavaletti to set it right, is thus explained by