Chapter 16 THE FELICITIES OF MENDELSSOHN

Happy, they say, is the country that hath no history. Happy, too, the man whose love affairs make tame reading.

It is not often that people live up to their names so thoroughly as Mendelssohn lived up to his. His parents were prophets when they called him Felix, for his life was happy, though he enjoyed it only thirty-eight years, and though it