FELIX MENDELSSOHN
The correspondence of Goethe and Zelter displeases me. I always feel out of sorts when I have been reading it. Do you know that I am making great strides in water-colors? Schirmer comes to me every Saturday at eleven, and paints for two hours at a landscape, which he is going to make me a present of, because the subject occurred to him whilst I was playing the little "Rivulet" (which you know). It represents a fellow who saunters out of a dark forest into a sunny little nook; trees all about, with stems thick and thin; one has fallen across the rivulet; the ground is carpeted with soft, deep moss, full of ferns; there are stones garlanded with blackberry-bushes; it is fine warm weather; the whole will be charming.
—Mendelssohn to Devrient