Fortunately our material is abundant enough to enable us to reconstruct in some measure the milieu into which Chopin was born and in which he grew up.

We will begin with that first circle which surrounds the child--his family.

The negative advantages which our Frederick found there--the absence of the privations and hardships of poverty, with their depressing and often demoralising influence--have already been adverted to; now I must say a few words about the positive advantages with which he was favoured.
And it may be at once stated that they cannot be estimated too highly.
Frederick enjoyed the greatest of blessings that can be bestowed upon mortal man--viz., that of being born into a virtuous and well-educated family united by the ties of love.

I call it the greatest of blessings, because neither catechism and sermons nor schools and colleges can take the place,, or compensate for the want, of this education that does not stop at the outside, but by its subtle, continuous action penetrates to the very heart's core and pervades the whole being.

The atmosphere in which Frederick lived was not only moral and social, but also distinctly intellectual.
The father, Nicholas Chopin, seems to have been a man of worth and culture, honest of purpose, charitable in judgment, attentive to duty, and endowed with a good share of prudence and commonsense.