It was presented after his death, by Marie d'Arquin, to a Prince Radziwill, with an inscription in her own hand-writing which indicates its origin, and the presentation which she makes of it.

The autograph, with the royal seal, is on the reverse side of the canvas.] How did Weber divine the Poland of other days?
Had he indeed the power to call from the grave of the past, the scenes which we have just contemplated, that he was thus able to clothe them with life, to renew their earlier associations?
Vain questions! Genius is always endowed with its own sacred intuitions! Poetry ever reveals to her chosen the secrets of her wild domain! All the poetry contained in the Polonaises had, like a rich sap, been so fully expressed from them by the genius of Weber, they had been handled with a mastery so absolute, that it was, indeed, a dangerous and difficult thing to attempt them, with the slightest hope of producing the same effect.

He has, however, been surpassed in this species of composition by Chopin, not only in the number and variety of works in this style, but also in the more touching character of the handling, and the new and varied processes of harmony.

Both in construction and spirit, Chopin's Polonaise In A, with the one in A flat major, resembles very much the one of Weber's in E Major.

In others he relinquished this broad style: Shall we say always with a more decided success?
In such a question, decision were a thorny thing.