>A survey of Schumann’s art will disclose the fact that, when emerged from his youth and early manhood, he was no longer able, as it seems, to think his own thought with consistency to the end. He was afraid of himself. It was as if he did not dare to acknowledge the results of the enthusiasm of his youth. Thus it happens that he frequently sought shelter in the world of Mendelssohn’s ideas. From the moment he did this he passed his zenith; his soul was sick; he was doomed long before the visible symptoms of insanity set in. It is therefore a futile labor to seek the real Schumann in his latest works, as one may do in the cases of Beethoven and Wagner. This is most obvious if we examine his latest choral compositions.