Allusion has already been made to George Sand, Henry Mürger, and Alfred de Musset. One must add to the literary circle of that time such personalities as these: Balzac, who first tasted success with the publication of 'Les Derniers Chouans,' about a year after Señor Garcia had arrived from Mexico, soon following this up with the earliest of his great works, 'La Peau de Chagrin'; Théophile Gautier, whose first long poem, 'Albertus,' was published about the same time, to be followed, in 1835, by the celebrated novel, 'Mademoiselle de Maupin,' with its defiant preface; Alfred de Vigny, whom Manuel Garcia, as a young man of twenty-five, saw abandon for good in 1830 the publication of his exquisite poetry, and confine himself after that date to works in prose alone.

Then there were Alphonse de Lamartine, statesman, poet, and historian, who, in 1829, had declined the post of Foreign Secretary in the Polignac Ministry, and by his 'Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses' achieved his unanimous election to the Academy; Lamercier, one of the three chief exponents of the Romantic school, with some of his detached passages equal in beauty to anything in the language, and others so bizarre as to border on the ridiculous; Delavigne, representative of the golden mean of French literature, the half-classic and half-romantic school; Béranger, the "Horace" of French poetry, whose outspoken ballads achieved such immense popularity, that in turn Louis XVIII. and Charles X. threw him into prison because of his freedom of ideas,—for probably no poet has ever exercised such a power over the destiny of a nation; Victor Hugo, engaged in bringing out 'Notre Dame de Paris,' 'Le Roi s'amuse,' 'Les Voix Interieures,' in which the poet's diction is held to have found its noblest expression, 'Ruy Blas,' almost the most famous of his stage rhapsodies, and many another work of world-wide fame; Eugène Sue, whose first hit was made in 1842 with the too famous 'Mystères de Paris,' followed three years later by 'Le Juif Errant'; the elder Dumas, who, during these years, published such works as 'Monte Cristo,' 'Les Trois Mousquetaires,' and 'Les Mémoires d'un Médecin'; while in the year of the maestro's departure for London, Alexander Dumas the younger was bringing out his immortal 'La Dame aux Camélias.' Nor must one forget Paul de Kock, Henri Rochefort, who was then only sixteen years old, Zola half that age, and François Coppée a child of six.

When we turn to the painting world there is an equal embarras de richesse. What can one say to such a dazzling list of artists as Rosa Bonheur, Horace Vernet, Paul Delaroche, the founder of the modern "Eclectic School," Prud'hon, Gericault, Delacroix, Gros, Scheffer, Decamps, Corot, Rousseau, Troyon, Duprè, Diaz, Jean François Millet (who took his place with Garcia on the barricades during the Revolution of '48), nay, even Meissonier himself, whose first contribution to the Salon in 1834, a water-colour and an oil-picture, the centenarian remembered to have seen, followed two years later by the "Chess-Players," the precursor of that long series of elaborate genre-pictures, in which he depicted the civil and military life of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Truly, had Manuel Garcia passed away in the year of the Revolution, in accordance with the modern cry of "too old at forty," his career and experiences would have still been of surpassing interest. But with this year we only see the scene of his triumphs shifted from France to England, and have yet to watch him not only carrying through a further forty-seven years of work as teacher, but appearing in the new rôle of inventor, and then passing on to that last period, ten years of wonderful old age.

THIRD PERIOD
LONDON
(1848-1895)

CHAPTER XIII.
ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND.
(1848-1854.)

AT the close of June 1848 Manuel Garcia, at the age of forty-three, arrived in London, where he was to make a new home and spend the rest of his days.

What changes had taken place in the capital since he had last been there in the autumn of 1825! When he left George IV. was still king; when he returned William IV. had reigned and been succeeded by Queen Victoria, who had already been on the throne over ten years, while our present king, as Prince of Wales, was six years old.