Berlin, November 17th, 1844.
Sir,
Pray accept my thanks for your kind letter, and the accompanying parcel, with its rich and valuable contents.
If you are like me, you can hear nothing more welcome about your works, than when you are told that you have made progress in them; and in those you have now sent me, this is very manifest throughout them all. They are almost in every respect masterly and defined, and devoid of all that is false or incongruous, in individual passages; and when taken as a whole, if one piece appears more finished or more sympathetic than another, what is so fine in Art is precisely, that it gives no mastery so entire as to rise superior to this; and one of the secrets of honest assiduous work is, that what is less successful does not give rise to despair, and what is more successful does not give rise to arrogance; and thus others may get a just insight into the workshop of the soul of an artist. Such a survey of your present production you have enabled me to make, by the valuable packet you have sent me. A succession of many works, displays decidedly what one solitary work cannot do, that you have won for yourself a higher and loftier position by the cultivation of your talents, which rejoices me much, and for which I owe you my sincere and heartfelt thanks.
May your praiseworthy endeavours to diffuse the knowledge of songs in your mother-tongue prove successful, and meet with that grateful acknowledgment which they so well deserve! I know of no more noble aim that any one could propose to himself, than to give music to his own language and to his own country, as you have done, and still design to do. These works are a fine commencement for such a purpose; but, that their tones may not die away unheard by your fellow-countrymen, many, many more must yet follow, and with ever-increasing progress. Vocation and endowments are your own. So, may Heaven grant you also health and steady perseverance, and a happy life!
This is the wish of your devoted
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
From Minister Eichhorn,[79] to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, at Frankfurt-am-Main.
Berlin, March 2nd, 1845.
Sir,