Berlin, and at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 29th arrived at Leipzig, where Mendelssohn received him with open arms, gave him the score of the ' Melusine ' overture, and introduced him, at the Baierischer Hof, to the chief musicians of the town. Leipzig was just then the home of a little knot of musicians who were destined to make their mark in the music of the century ; chief amongst them were Mendelssohn himself and Rohert Schumann, with both of whom Bennett was thrown into daily intercourse. The little diary which he kept at Leipzig, unfortunately a record of the barest description, shows that it was to Schumann he owed an introduction to Kistner, the publisher, who at once took some of his compositions. As this took place on 22 Nov., the intimacy between the two musicians must have sprung up very early after Bennett's arrival at Leipzig. Schumann's friendship for the English composer was unbounded, and the criticisms he published on his early compositions were singularly appreciative and discriminating. Though personally Bennett warmly reciprocated Schumann's friendship, he seems never to have been altogether reconciled to much of the German composer's music. In later years loyalty to his friend caused Bennett to be one of the first to introduce Schumann's compositions to English audiences, yet they never exercised such an influence upon his ow^n style as did those of Mendelssohn, to ^whose genius his own nature was so much more akin. At Leipzig Bennett lodged with « Dr. Hasper, to whose house he moved on 2 Nov. On the 10th of the same month he recorded in his diary that he began a symphony, but nothing more is known as to this work. He made his first appearance at the Gewandhaus concerts on 19 Jan. 1837, when he played his own third concerto with the utmost success. On the 25th of the same month 'The Naiads' was produced at the Society of British Musicians. On the 29th his grandfather, to whom he owed more perhaps than will ever be known, died at Cambridge. On 13 Feb. ' The Naiads ' was played at the Gewandhaus, Bennett himself conducting, and on 6 March the overture to 'Parisina'—which he had re-scored for the purpose—was performed at the same concerts. The following three months were devoted to various pianoforte compositions, and to rescoring ' The Naiads ' for the Philharmonic, where it was played on 29 May. On 11 June Bennett left Leipzig, and returned to England by way of Mainz and Rotterdam. August was spent at Cambridge, and on the reopening of the Academy in October, Bennett was appointed to a class there, the beginning of that long routine of teaching in which he was involved for the rest of his. life. In 1838 he was elected a member of the Garrick Club and of the Royal Society of Musicians, and an associate of the Philharmonic Society. August and September of this year were spent at Grantchester, near Cambridge, and here the (published) fourth concerto was written, the lovely barcarolle in which may have been inspired beside the sedgy windings of the Granta. In October he returned to Leipzig, where he stayed until March, having in the meantime written the ' Wood Nymphs ' overture, which was produced at the Gewandhaus on 24 Jan., where he had also played the new fourth concerto on 17 Jan. In August he turned his attention to writing an opera, an agpreement for which was actually signed, but the difliculty which so many musicians have experienced, that of finding a suitable libretto, prevented the plan from being ever carried into execution. In the summer of the following year he was much occupied with writing an oratorio ; this was probably a work he had intended to call ' Zion,' but which was never finished. One of the choruses from it was subsequently inserted in 'The Woman of Samaria.' Towards the end of 1841 Bennett became engaged to Miss Wood, who had been an Academy pupil in 1838. She was the daughter of Commander James Wood, R.N. In January 1842 Bennett once more visited Germany. At Cassel he made the acquaintance of Spohr and Hauptmann, at Leipzig he found Pierson, who had just settled there, and at Dresden he met Reissiger and Schneider. On this visit there was much intercourse with both Mendelssohn and Schumann, the former of whom travelled from Berlin with him to Leipzig. On his return to London he at once fell into the round of teaching and concerts which so seriously interfered with the time he had to devote to composition. His few holidays were spent at Southampton, where his future wife's family lived, and here his marriage took place on 9 April 1844. The end of the preceding and the beginning of that year had een occupied by ms candidature for the chair of music at Edinburgh University, a post he did not succeed in obtaining. Soon after his marriage he was busy writing an overture to be called (in allusion to his wife's maiden name) 'Marie de Bois;' this was afterwards used as the overture to 'The May Queen.' In March 1845 Bennett moved to 15 Russell Place, Fitzroy Square, where he lived until 1859, when he bought 50 Inverness Terrace. There are very few events in the next few years of his life which are worth chronicling. Until the composition of
