away from thee; thou must swear one thing.

Never to ask, nor wish to know, whence I came, and what my name and race! ELSA. Never, Lord, will I ask the question. LOHENGRIN. Elsa, hast thou well understood me? Thou wilt never ask, nor wish to know, whence I came, or what my name and race! ELSA. (Looking up to him with the greatest ardour.) My protector! my angel! my saviour! who believest firmly in my innocence! What greater crime of doubt could there be, than that which would deprive me of my faith in thee? As thou protectest me in my distress, so will I truly obey thy commands!

LOHENGRIN. (Moved and delighted, raising ELSA, and pressing her to his breast.) Elsa, I love thee!

KING, MEN, AND WOMEN. (Moved and in a low voice.) What pleasing wonder must I behold! Is it magic that has seized on me? I feel my heart melt within me when I look on that most comely man! LOHENGRIN. (Who, after solemnly delivering up ELSA to the KING'S protection, advances slowly into the middle of the stage.) Listen! To you, people and nobles, I declare that Elsa von Brabant is free from all crime. That thy charge, Count von Telramund, is false, the judgment

of Heaven will decide!

FRIEDRICH. (Who has hitherto fixed a scrutinising look uninterruptedly on LOHENGRIN, after a passionate inward struggle, which in the end gives way to resolution.) Rather death than cowardice! Whatever magic may have brought thee hither, stranger, that comest so boldly to affront me, thy proud menaces do not move me in the least, since I was never inclined to falsehood. I accept, therefore, the combat, and trust for victory in the due course of justice!

LOHENGRIN. Now, O King, arrange the order of our contest! KING. Well, then, let three of you step forward for each combatant, and carefully measure off the lists for the fight. (Three Saxon_nobles step forward for LOHENGRIN, and three Brabant nobles for FRIEDRICH. They measure off the lists with solemn steps, and mark them off with their spears.)

HERALD. (Standing in the middle, and addressing_those_around.) Listen, and mark well. No one shall interrupt the combat. Keep away from the enclosure, for whoever does not preserve the rights of peace, shall, if a free man, atone for his offence with the loss of his hand; and, if a serf, of his head.

ALL THE MEN. Let the freeman atone for his offence with his hand, and the serf with his head!

THE HERALD. (To LOHENGRIN and FRIEDRICH.) Do you, too, listen, you combatants before the court! Observe truthfully the rules of the fight! Do not by stratagems and deceptions of evil sorcery disturb the quality of judgment. God judges you according to the right; therefore, trust in him, and not in your own strength!

LOHENGRIN AND FRIEDRICH. May God judge me according to the right! therefore, I trust in him, and not in my own strength.

KING. (Advancing solemnly into the middle.) O thou, my Lord and God, I now call upon thee to be present at this combat! By the victory of the sword pronounce a judgment that shall clearly show the falsehood and the truth. To the arm of the Pure One give a hero's strength, and let the strength of the False One be numbed; O, help us, God, on this occasion, as our wisdom is but simplicity!

ELSA AND LOHENGRIN. O my Lord and God, thou wilt declare thy true judgment, therefore I do not fear.

FRIEDRICH. I encounter thy judgment in all truth, Lord God; do not desert my honour!

ORTRUD. I reckon firmly upon the strength, which always gains victory for him in the fight.

ALL THE MEN. To the arm of the Pure One give a hero's strength, and let the strength of the False One be numbed; thus pronounce to us thy judgment, O, Lord and God; only do not delay! (On a signal from the HERALD, the trumpeters sound a long challenge. The KING draws his sword out of the earth and strikes his shield three times as it hangs upon the tree. At the first stroke, LOHENGRIN and FRIEDRICH take their places; at the second, they draw their swords and put themselves in position; and, at the third, they begin the combat. After several desperate encounters, LOHENGRIN strikes down his opponent with a blow.

LOHENGRIN. (Placing his sword upon FRIEDRICH's throat.) By the victory of God, thy life is at present mine! I give it thee; mayest thou dedicate it to repentance! (The King leads ELSA to LOHENGRIN,

on whose breast she falls in ecstacy. On FRIEDRICH's fall, the Saxons and Thuringians take their swords out of the ground, and the Bra banters, on the other side, theirs. The nobles and men rush joyfully into the open space, which is soon completely occupied by the crowd.) ELSA. O that I could find songs of joy equal to thy fame, and which, worthy of praising thee, were rich in highest praise! In thee must I melt away; before thee I die for bliss! If ever I am destined to be happy, take all that I am!

LOHENGRIN. I have gained the victory through thy purity alone! Now shalt thou be richly recompensed for what thou hast suffered. FRIEDRICH. (Writhing painfully on the ground.) Woe! God has conquered me; through him have I lost the victory! I must despair of happiness; my honour and reputation are gone!

ORTRUD. (Who has witnessed with rage the fall of FRIEDRICH.) Who is it that has conquered him, and through whom I am powerless ? Must I despair, on his account-are all my hopes ruined?

KING, MEN, and WOMEN. Sing loud airs of praise to the victor! Glory to thy voyage! Hail to thy coming! Hail to thy race, protector of the Pure One! Thee alone do we sing; for thee do our songs resound! Never will another hero like thee visit this land! (The Saxons raise LOHENGRIN upon his shield, while the Brabanters place ELSA upon that of the King, having previously thrown their cloaks over it, and both are in this manner carried off amid shouts of joy. The curtain falls.)

ACT II. SCENE I

Within the Castle of Antwerp. In the middle of the background, the Palace (knights' dwelling); in the foreground, to the left, the "Kemenate," (women's dwelling): to the right, in the foreground, the door of the Cathedral; on the same side, in the background, the door of the tower. It is night. The windows of the Palace are brilliantly illuminated. The merry strains of trumpets and sackbuts are heard from within. On the steps of the Cathedral door, FRIEDRICH and ORTRUD are seated in worn and sad-coloured garments. ORTRUD, with her arm resting upon her knee, keeps her eye uninterruptedly fixed upon the lighted windows of the Palace. FRIEDRICH looks gloomily upon the ground. A long silence.

FRIEDRICH. (Hastily rising.) Rise, partner of my disgrace! The young day must no longer find us here.

ORTRUD. (Without changing her position.) I cannot go; I am spellbound. Let me, from out this splendour of our enemies' feast, imbibe a terrible and deadly poison, that shall end their joy, and our disgrace! FRIEDRICH. (Coming up to ORTRUD with frowning look.) Thou dreadful woman! What keeps me still spell-bound in thy presence? Why do I not leave thee alone, and fly far, far, far away-where my conscience would again find repose? Through thee it was I lost my honour and my reputation; never again shall praise be lavished on me; disgrace is my heroism! I have been placed under the ban; my sword lies shattered; my coat of arms is broken; and my paternal hearth is cursed! Wherever I turn I am condemned and shunned; even the robber flies me, that my look may not pollute him. O, since I am so unhappy, would that I had chosen death. My honour have I lost! my honour, my honour is departed!

[Falls in a fit of wild anguish on the ground. Horns and sackbuts are again heard within the Palace. ORTRUD. (Still in her former position, and after a long pause, without looking at FRIEDRICH, who has slowly raised himself from the ground.) What makes thee give vent to such wild lamentations ?

FRIEDRICH. (With a violent and menacing gesture.) To think that I am even deprived of the weapon with which I might kill thee! ORTRUD. (With calm contempt.) Peaceful Count von Telramund! why dost thou mistrust me?

FRIEDRICH. Dost thou ask? Was it not thy testimony, thy information, which inveigled me into accusing the Pure One? Did'st thou not falsely say that, in the gloomy wood, at home, thou beheldest her, from thy wild castle, commit the crime? How, with thine own eyes, thou sawest Elsa herself drowning her brother in the water? Did'st thou not ensnare my proud heart by the prophecy that Radbod's ancient princely tree would be green again and rule in Brabant? Did'st thou not thus prevail on me to renounce the pure hand of Elsa, and take thee as my wife, because thou wast Radbod's last offspring?

ORTRUD. (In a low voice.) Ah! how mortally dost thou insult me! (Aloud.) All this-aye-all this I said and told thee!

FRIEDRICH. And madest me, whose name was highly honoured, and whose way of life was looked upon as a model of the highest virtue, the infamous partner of thy lies?

ORTRUD. (Arrogantly.) Who lied!

FRIEDRICH. Thou! Has not God, by his judgment, stricken me for it?

ORTEUD. (With terrible scorn.) God?

FRIEDRICH. Horrible! How fearfully does that name sound in thy mouth!

ORTRUD. Ah! dost thou name thy cowardice God!
FRIEDRICH. Ortrud!

ORTRUD. Wilt thou threaten me? Threaten me-a woman? O, coward! Had'st thou but threatened so furiously him who sent thee forth to misery, thou would'st have reaped victory, instead of shame! Ah! a man who only knew how to meet him, would have found him weaker than a child!

FRIEDRICH. The weaker he might be, the more powerfully would God's strength fight for him!

ORTRUD. God's strength! Ha, ha! Give me but power here for a single day, and I will assuredly show thee what a feeble god protects

him.

FRIEDRICH. (Starting with inward terror.) Thou wild prophetess! Wilt thou again mysteriously ensnare my spirit?

ORTRUD. (Pointing to the palace, in which the lights have been extinguished.) The revellers lay themselves down in voluptuous repose. Sit by my side. The hour has come for my prophetic eye to enlighten thee! (During what follows, FRIEDRICH approaches nearer and nearer to ORTRUD, as if attracted by some unholy power, and bends down, so that his ear is close to her.)

ORTRUD. Dost thou know who is this hero, whom a swan has drawn to the land?

FRIEDRICH. No.

ORTRUD. What would'st thou give to know it, when I tell thee that if he is compelled to say what are his name and race, all his power, with which a magic charm laboriously endows him, is at an end?

FRIEDRICH. Ha! then indeed I understand his prohibition! ORTRUD. Now listen! No one here has the power to tear the secret from him, except her whom he so strictly forbad ever to ask the question.

FRIEDRICH. Our task would be then to entrap Elsa into breaking his prohibition?

ORTRUD. Ha! how well and quickly thou see'st my meaning!
FRIEDRICH. But how can we accomplish it?

OSTRUD. Listen! above all things, we must not quit this place: therefore sharpen thy wits! In order to awake in her just suspicion, step forth and accuse him of having deceived his judges by magic! FRIEDRICH (with increasing rage). Ha! deception and magic spells ORTRUD. If thou art unsuccessful, there is still a course of violence! FRIEDRICH. Violence!

ORTRUD. It is not in vain that I am acquainted with the secret arts; therefore, mark well my words! Every being that is powerful through magic, should the smallest member be torn from his body, immediately becomes powerless, as he is.

FRIEDRICH. Ha! If thou but speak'st the truth!

ORTRUD. Oh, if in the combat thou hadst but lopped off a fingeraye-even the joint of a finger-this hero would have been in thy power! FRIEDRICH. (Wildly.) Horrible; Ha! what do I hear! I imagined I was stricken by the arm of God-the judges allowed themselves to be fooled with trickery, while I lost my honour by magic! And yet thou sayest I shall be able to avenge my shame? that I can prove my truth? that I may dispel the wiles of her paramour and regain my honour? O woman, whom thus I see before me in the night! If thou now deceivest me, woe, woe, to thee!

ORTRUD. Ha! how madly dost thou rage!-be only calm and collected, and I will teach thee the sweet pleasures of revenge! (FRIEDRICH seats himself by ОRTHUD on the steps.)

ORTRUD AND FRIEDRICH. Let me now, out of the wild night of my breast, swear to accomplish the work of revenge. For you, who are lost in such sweet sleep, O, know that destruction wakes!

SCENE II.

ELSA, in white robes, appears in the balcony of the "Kemenate," and leans over the breast-work. FRIEDRICH and ORTRUD are still sitting on the steps of the Cathedral opposite.

ELSA. Ye breezes, that my lamentations have often swelled so mourn. fully, I must tell you with gratitude how my happiness has been achieved. By your means was he drawn hither, and you smiled upon his voyage. On wild sea waves you faithfully preserved him. I have often troubled you to dry my tears; now bring coolness to my cheek, glowing with love!

ORTRUD. It is she!

FRIEDRICH. Elsa.

ORTRUD. (In her former position, in a loud plaintive voice.) Elsa! ELSA. (After a pause.) Who calls? How dread and mournful sounds my name through the night!

ORTRUD. Elsa! Is my voice so strange to thee? Wilt thou entirely disown the unhappy wretch thou sendest forth to distant misery? ELSA. Ortrud! is it thou?-What art thou doing here, thou miserable woman? Ortrud.

Miserable woman? Thou art indeed right to call me thus! In the distant solitude of the forest, where I lived quietly and peaceably-what did I do to thee? What did I do to thee? Joyless, and only bewailing the misfortune that long weighed down my race-what did I do to thee? What did I do to thee?

ELSA. In Heaven's name, why dost thou accuse me? Was it I who did thee injury?

ORTRUD. How could'st thou envy me the happiness of being chosen as the wife of one whom thou so readily did'st reject? ELSA. All bounteous God, what does this mean? ORTRUD. Although an unhappy delusion misled him to accuse thee, Pure One, of a crime, his heart is torn with remorse, and he is condemned to fearful penance.

ELSA. Just God!

ORTRUD. O, thou art happy!--after a short course of suffering, sweet with innocence, thou only see'st life under a smiling aspect; thou can'st happily separate from me, whom thou sendest after the track of death-may the dull semblance of my grief never enter thy castle!

ELSA. How little should I appreciate thy kindness, Almighty God, who hast rendered me so happy, if I spurned the misery which bows before me in the dust!-O, never will I!-Ortrud, wait! I myself will let thee in! (She retires hastily into the "Kemenate.")

ORTRUD. (Springing up from the steps with wild enthusiasm.) Desecrated gods! now assist my revenge! exact retribution for the disgrace to which you have been subjected! strengthen me in your holy service, and destroy the contemptible delusion of the Recreant! Wodan! thou strong one, I call upon thee! Freia! thou lofty one, hear me! Bless my deceit and hypocrisy, that my revenge may be complete!

[ELSA and two of her MAIDS, carrying torches, issue from
the lower door of the "Kemenate."]
Ortrud, where art thou?

ELSA. ORTRUD. (Throwing herself down abjectly before ELSA). Here, at thy feet!

ELSA. (Starting back in affright). God help me! Is it thus I must behold thee, whom I have never seen but in pride and pomp? My heart is ready to break, at beholding thee thus humbled before me! Arise! O, spare thy prayers! If thou hatest me, I forgive thee; and what thou hast already suffered through me, I beg that thou wilt pardon too!

ORTRUD. May'st thou be rewarded for such goodness!

ELSA. I will also appeal to the loving heart of him who to-morrow becomes my husband, that he may show grace to Friedrich as well. ORTRUD. Thou fetterest me with the bonds of gratitude.

ELSA. Let me see thee in the early morn! decked in costly robes shalt thou go with me to the cathedral: there I await my hero, to be made his wife before God.

ORTRUD. How can I repay thee for such kindness, impotent and wretched as I am? If I live in favour with thee, I shall never be aught but a beggar. I have only one power left, of which no edict has deprived me; by its means I may, perhaps, protect thy life, and preserve thee from the misery of remorse.

ELSA. What dost thou mean?

ORTRUP. I warn thee not to trust too blindly to thy fortune; that no harm may cast its net around thee, let me charge myself with thy future.

ELSA. What harm ?

FRIEDRICH. Why?

ORTRUD. She is for me-her hero may belong to thee. [FRIEDRICH retires into the background.

ORTRUD. (Aside.) Ha! this pride shall teach me how to prevail against her truth; I will turn the weapons against him; let her arrogance bring forth repentance. (ELSA conducts ORTRUD into the "Kemenate," the Maidens preceding them with the lights. The day

(Continued from page 229.)

HAD the composers, from the fourteenth century, laid themselves out in melody, the art would have become stationary from the moment of its birth, as it was with the ancients, and as it is yet with every people which Europe has not drawn into the circle of its civilisation. Melody exercises such a powerful attraction, that once admitted into composition, the best heads among the musicians would have occupied themselves with it exclusively. But what could they have done for it? I ought, however, first to ask, whence could they receive it? Were they to borrow it from the people, as was done two centuries later, when such a loan could take place without danger, and even to the benefit of the art, already rich out of its own materials? But that would have been the ruin of music at the time of the oldest contrapuntists, since they never once possessed the means of accompanying the simplest tune. To a drinking song, they would have set some sort of a Greek bass, which the true musical sense of the hearers would have declared wrong; and then they would have sung and played it without any accompaniment. Art would have risen, or have retrograded, if you will, to the stand-point of the people; from that point no farther progress would have been possible; the doors would have remained walled up for ever. Dilettantism-which, like melody, was in the state of nature, and which at that time only grouped itself around the minstrels, troubadours, and other musicians who were no artists-would have exerted an imperious influence upon the works of the composers; purse in hand it would have demanded of them melody, and only melody, no matter whether good or bad; that which one has is always excellent, so long as he knows no other. What musician, who was an artist, could have resisted the demand of the public? Who would have puzzled his head to achieve a piece of canonical counterpoint, which nobody wanted, so long as gold, fame, and the satisfaction of writing things pleasant to the ear, were to be earned with so much smaller outlay? In this case the germ of learned music would have gone down in the popular music, and the art would have sunk never to rise again.

Thanks to the holy Cecilia, our blessed patron saint, that she in her high providence inspired the old doctors with that hatred for all that was not natural, whereby they steered clear of a rock, upon which all preceding systems of music had gone to wreck! For thousands of years had men wandered on the path of instinctive melodies, which were so attractive, so flowing, and always so unfruitful. With it have all the races of antiquity began and ended. They cherished it from their savage state to the ages of their splendour, and even to the latest periods of their political existence. And what succeeded? Nothing that added any originality to the art of composition. Turn your eyes to Asia, and you there find nothing but a continuation of the same negative effects, proceeding from the same causes.

If a Rameau had only appeared in the times of a Dufay and a Binchois, who could have explained to them thorough bass and the formation of the chord by thirds placed one above the other; if other theorists had taught them the true scales and the diatonic harmony (the whole system of thirds, fourths, and fifths, in which the steps of the scale, major and minor, are contained), then they would have only needed to set themselves to work; the composers would have transformed themselves into musicians at once, and in ten years the art would have made more progress than in four centuries before. Let us confess, that all we know is exceedingly like the egg of Columbus; although there is this distinction between Columbus and Rameau, that, when the latter came, the egg was already standing on its point. He

would have taken good care not to have come before. If speculation ever supply the place of the labour of centuries, there would be nothing left for time to do. It was by routine and blind groping, then, that the musicians had to complete the theory of the chord and the involved relations; and nothing, I opine, could lead them thither with more certainty than the fundamental rules of the fugued system; nay, further—that alone could lead them there.

The rule of the canon imposed on the musician a constrained progression, which was predetermined by the proportional distances, the steps, and the special kind of imitation. The whole difficulty-which sometimes indeed was great-consisted in reconciling the problem with the little that was known of harmony or pure composition. To flatter the ear could not be the main business of the canonists, as we have said before moreover, they teared to offend the ear by the two frequent use of dissonances, and their scruples in this direction were carried to the greatest excess. Obeying thus a principle, which in itself had nothing in common with the rules of pure composition, they could not in the beginning always foresee to what results the canon would lead them, and so they stumbled as soon as they met any other combination of notes than the perfect major or minor chord. Among those unforeseen or accidental combinations, there were some which they thought tolerable in their dissonant steps as transition tones. Others, on the contrary, struck so hard upon the ear, that they were scarcely willing to let them pass under that title. The more the style of the canon became refined, the more discoveries they made in the category of tolerated chords; but so much the more, too, the painful chords multiplied, and it needed only this to wound in imagination ears which were afraid of everything that did not bear the name of consonances in the books. There was a multitude of cases, in which the rules of the canon, nay, those of harmony, said No." That furnished matter enough for dispute. Which side was the one to take between two powers, both of which had exacted the oath of fidelity on the part of the musicians? To sacrifice harmony and split one's ears, for that they were no longer barbarous enough; to limit the laws of the canon, to disturb the symmetry that lay before their eyes, the mathematical exactness-they were too simple yet to think of that. But if they failed to bring these two points into harmony, then vanished all the merit of having conquered a difficulty, and the labour lost all value in the eyes of the judges.

Necessity is the mother of invention. They sought for outlets, and gradually, in the course of long ages, they found out preparations, resolutions, syncopes or tied notes, anticipations, retardations, the rules to which transition notes, holds (fermaten), etc., are subject-pure discoveries of the greatest importance, which at first passed for a sort of compromise between the demands of harmony and the wilful, but not the less unlimited caprices of the fugue. In these expedients of lofty composition our ancestors discerned a remedy, but by no means a nourishment for the ear; a remedy which they, as wise physicians, used with great moderation and caution. But when the ear had once tasted the forbidden fruit of dissonances, it accustomed itself so well to them in time, that what had been a cause of pain was transformed into a pleasure, and the technical into an aesthetic necessity. From that time forward dissonant intricacies, introduced purposely and multiplied through the satisfaction that they gave, became the soul of the improved contrapuntal music.

If I have not incorrectly expressed myself, the reader must have comprehended that the canon is the source of the whole been made if men had followed from the first the errors of the wealth of harmony, and that such discoveries would never have melodic style, or of per-inspiration.

After the canon had been used for some time by the adepts in music only to profane ends, and as a strange and interesting curiosity, it was admitted also into composition for the church. There it could unite itself with the Roman choral chant, which it afterwards-through a series of compromises, acceptable so far as the form was concerned, but destructive to the substanceThe oldest canon, cited by Burney, is composed to a secular text; "Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing Cuccu."

expelled from its unlimited dominion. The choral song was to keep on singing the middle part, note by note, as it had always been done, whilst the canon claims for itself the other voices. Out of this tradition grew the oldest form of church works, so far as counterpoint was concerned; the canto fermo was still clearly distinguishable throughout; but then came the manifold alternations of the canon, which, steadily multiplying, covered up and, at last, utterly suppressed the voice of the traditional chant. The effect was to raise a wall of separation, not existing for the eyes alone, between the ear and the church song: soon the musicians allowed themselves to set a middle part of their own invention, and still oftener popular melodies, in its place. The practice of founding the entire music of a mass upon an altogether profane song is almost as old as the origin of counterpoint. Kiese wetten, who has reinstated the Flemish or Belgian school in the glorious rights of the higher antiquity, of which other historical inquirers had deprived it, gives us examples of the labours of a Dufay, an Eloy, and a Fangues-the heads of a school before Ochenheim-who were the first to whom the name of composers could be attached without undue exaggeration. Dufay, the oldest of these three, wrote a mass upon the song, "L'Homme Armé." Josquin, the hero of the fifteenth, and Palestrina, the hero of the sixteenth century, have written their most learned, if not their most beautiful, church compositions upon the same song.

Burney expresses himself very strongly about this practice. "Is there anything," says he, "more absurd and disgusting than to let the mass be sung to street and tavern tunes?" These are remarks about which an intelligent man must be on his guard, precisely because everybody makes them. In the first place, the learned doctor should have considered that this custom, profane and absurd as it may appear, maintained itself for three centuries; which, for an absurdity, that neither disguises nor excuses itself, is an extraordinarily long life. Then again, Dr. Burney should have seen, and indeed better than anyone else, that here the incongruity resides in the idea of the thing, and not in the thing itself. The popular melody adopted for the canto fermo was not used in the manner of a so-called principal melody to-day, and it exercised but little influence on the character of the work, to which it served as a basis. Banished into the middle part, altered and varied, amplified or diminished, according to the demands of the canon, frequently interrupted by long pauses, pulled to pieces and freely imitated between the other voices, covered above and below with the counterpoint, this melody could not be recognised as the same they had been singing every day. There was nothing repulsive in it, therefore, at least for the ear.

This practice, in and for itself, would seem to have deserved the most earnest attention of historians. Burney and his contemporaries should have enquired, what technical necessity would have upheld for three centuries long, a custom so foreign and so contrary to the religious spirit of that age; they should have asked themselves, what miracle moved the schoolastic pedantry to borrow from the musical practice of the people, a thing which it so much despised-a pedantry, we say, which in music, more than in any other art or science, had filled up an impassable mountain of Greek and Latin words, that either had no meaning, or awakened only false ideas, and, for the most part, had nothing in common with music; a pedantry, which weighed upon it like an Alp, and threatened almost to crush it. Who can explain to us this monstrous contradiction? I flatter myself it is explained in all I have already said about the music of nature and the original auxiliary sources of music.

The composers, who, for a long time, and necessarily, were not in a condition to invent anything resembling a melody, needed for the execution of their contrapuntable staying a first and immoveable plan, which, for this reason, they called canto fermo. At first they borrowed it from the choral song of the church; but, after the knowledge of counterpoint and harmony had made considerable progress, of which the productions of the old Flemish school affords proof, they saw clearly that the choral song, with its unnatural scales, was a cramped and troublesome basis of operations. But what should they put in its place? To invent was hard; to invent happily, still harder, if not impossible. In this perplexity, the musicians-in spite of themselves, no doubt -were forced to recognise, that the popular melodies, being far

more singable, and, in respect to sonority and rhythm, far more characteristic than anything that art was able to produce, were much more readily adapted to the different developements of fugued counterpoint. Many respectable people have, from necessity, become thieves, but shame-faced thieves, dreading detection more than punishment. That is the history of the old contrapuntists. They gave the people their own songs disguised, and they understood how to fortify themselves against the complaints of the ear; for they sinned, not with the design of making their church compositions more melodious, but, I repeat it, solely in the interest of counterpoint; and this distinguishes them from moderns of the sixteenth century, who took these very songs and fitted to them accompaniments, out of regard for the melodythat is to say, for the songs. (To be continued.)

PARIS.

(From our own Correspondent.)

There is at last an effectual break in the dull monotony which has so long characterised the musical world of Paris. M. Adam's new opera, La Cour de Célimène, has been produced at the Opéra-Comique; and the Lisette of M. Ortolan (savoury, name), has seen the light at the Théâtre-Lyrique. Both have succeeded, and each deserved the success it obtained, which is of the quiet and mild, rather than the enthusiastic and violent description.

The fair Célimène is a countess of noble birth and ancient descent, endowed with beauty, wit and wealth, tempered by the coquetry and flightiness which form the basis of her character. Her sister, the Baroness, possesses equal beauty, less wealth, and more steadiness.

The countess resides in her chateau in Brittany, and is surrounded by a court of aspirants to her hand and fortune, consisting of one commander, one chevalier, four youths, four full-grown, and four elderly gentlemen. To each of these she holds out some hopes of success; but, in her secret heart, the commander is the favoured lover; and he, at first divided between the charms and merits of the two sisters, put their names into a hat, and, drawing forth that of Celimène, determines to devote his attention to her. The chevalier is a Gascon, full of the hot blood and boastful speech for which his countrymen are proverbial. He first courted the baroness, but, receiving no encouragement, changed his wooing to Celimène. She, with her innate coquetry, led him on to hope for success, but one fine morning quietly informed him that her choice was made, and that she would bestow her hand on the commander. The chevalier is furious, declares to the countess he will show her that a gentlemen of his standing cannot be so treated with impunity; that she shall not marry the commander; and that to prevent her so doing he will have recourse to prudence, deceit, and force-the scaling ladder and the narcotie. He rushes from her presence furious, seeks the commander, insults him, and provokes a duel, wherein the unfortunate commander is hit in body, limbs, and head, and falls, declaring that nothing can stand against the rapier of the furious Gascon. Célimène, in despair, sees that she must pour oil on the troubled waters, and sends the Baroness with tender messages on her part to the chevalier. He, on seeing the baroness, feels his old affection revive in full force, and, fancying that she delivers on her own behalf the tender messages wherewith she is charged by her sister, falls at her feet and pours forth his passionate vows. The baroness is delighted, as she sees a way of relieving her sister, and she has a weakness for the chevalier, whom she regrets having refused. She therefore encourages him, and acccepts his hand; the commander weds Célimène, and so ends the opera. The libretto is exceedingly well written by M. Bosier, the phraseology is neat, pointed, and terse, situations well worked out, and the plot clearly developed. The music is lively and replete with the comic element. The opening chorus from the twelve aspirants leads at once in medias res, the melody serving in a duet for the two sisters, which follows. This is succeeded by an air," Charmer, briller, c'est de votre âge." Then comes a quartet, in which the words "Si vous l'épousez, à vous je m'attacherai," are taken up successively by each voice,