Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/110

96 to let me have a word on the subject, or even a bit of paste-board, but to leave me to the chance of a roundabout piece of information? Though I confess, indeed, I deserved this thoroughly, yet a preacher, as you are, is the last person who should exact vengeance, or bear malice against his enemy. Please don’t do so now, but let me hear from you again.

Your notes for the “St. Paul” were admirable; I have made use of them all without exception. It is a curious thing, and a good one, that in all the passages I formerly wanted to invert or alter for the sake of the composition, I have time after time had to restore the precise text of the Bible; it is the best in the end. Half the first part is now ready; I hope to end it by Autumn and to complete the whole about February. But how are things going at Dessau? It would be pleasant to hear they remained just as they were. I do hope you still keep your cheerfulness and love of life, still play the piano, and delight in Sebastian Bach, and so are the same old fellow you were. I should not doubt it, but here one is surrounded with such direful examples of preachers who do their best to freeze up every pleasure for themselves and others; dry prosaic pedagogues, who regard a concert as sinful, and a country dance as a pernicious dissipation, think a theatre the lake of brimstone itself, and denounce the spring with its blossoms and sweet weather as a pit of corruption.

You will have heard of the Elberfeld breed. But in these parts it is still worse, and its result is abominable. Worst of all is the arrogance with which