to the King Apollo; and the best boundary which can be established we islanders are bound to believe is a watery wall,-not that I by any means admire a preponderance of that element in the drink of heroes. Oh! if the theme liketh you not-no more on the subject; but this I certainly will remark, that the lower classes, down to a very low point in the social scale indeed, seem to enjoy their musical and dramatic entertainments upon a wiser principle: they combine them with festive enjoyment. And though I should not be disposed to patronise the materials on which they jollify, yet if right good punch were substituted for gin and beer-such punch as that which was imbibed by the old proprietor and stage-manager of Drury Lane-I can well imagine that a critic might sit and sip with great satisfaction to himself, and great advantage to the composer and actors, from the sharpening of all the faculties of his censorial brain, and the effusion of goodnature which would swell his pericardium. Oh! joking I am, but not, as you fancy, extravagantly. What could be more delicious than sitting in your box with your wine and dessert before you, and listening devotionally to such music as we are about to hear-drinking your claret, or crunching your olive, "the best aid to wine," at the pauses that enthusiasm allowed you, and excitement, which when you are sedentary is always thirsty, would suggest? You laugh at the picture. Titian would have made a better thing of it than of his "Concert," where the people all stand with their mouths open, or, as Homer would say, with the fence of their teeth unclosed. Believe me, the listeners, however employed, have the advantage of the picturesque in appearance. It is not nice to see men and women sing, charm they never so wisely. The dignity of man is certainly degraded to the eye by the exercise of the art, vocal or instrumental, delicious though it be to the senses and soul of the listener. This seems harsh to say; but so it is. I quite agree with Chesterfield, and would say with him to my son, "I had rather see you dead than with a pipe in your mouth or a fiddle under your chin." The fact is that, for full enjoyment, you ought to be at a

considerable distance in space from singers, and fiddlers, and horn-blowers, and all these sort of cattle; else it were better that you shut your eyes, and left all to your ears. What I want to urge is that, being at a convenient distance, you should, after the old Roman fashion, be enabled to gratify several senses at once. Thus, for example, I would have your palate pleased, and your heart, moreover, merry with wine-your eye by the appropriate illusion of men, women, and things-and your ear by the works of genius and the labours of artistic talent. If the composer of the Zauberflöte were alive, he would agree with me. Νο man was more gifted by God with the power of enjoying life, and every thing in this beautiful world of ours, than Mozart. And this is the blessing which Heaven confers only on its especial favourites. Few men ever passed through a happier or higher existence. And we may say of Mozart, as Tacitus did of his valiant and noble son-in-law, "Whatsoever of him we loved, whatsoever we admired, remains, and shall remain, in the minds of men, the eternity of ages, the fame of things."

Brief, bright, and glorious, was his young career."

He was at five years old, when other children are mere animals, an accomplished musician and composer. He died at three or four-and-thirty; just as he had completed his worldfamous requiem, which the other day ushered Napoleon to his final restingplace on the banks of the Seine, amongst the French people whom he loved so well. These are the words of his will. Let us hope that, the wish being fulfilled, he now sleeps well. But for Mozart, if I did not firmly believe in the maxim inculcated by the Grecian sage and the Roman satirist,

"Whom the gods love die young," I should say of the composer, in the language of the Frenchman,

"Hélas sa brulante énergie,

A fait sa gloire et son malheur;
Son cœur inspirait son génie ;

Son génie a brisé son cœur."

Perhaps no man living ever had a higher musical genius, or greater

knowledge to support it. He did for music what Pericles did for oratory, whereof George Croly has well written

"Full arm'd to life the portent sprung, Minerva from the Thunderer's brow; And his the sole, the sacred hand, That waved her ægis o'er the land."

Since Mozart's day great additions have been made to the orchestra, especially in wind instruments; great improvements have been made in the instruments already in use; and men of exalted genius - Beethoven and Weber-have succeeded him, and taken their position near him, as men who have achieved that renown which shall never pass away. But, with all advantages and modern aids, none have surpassed him in any single effort; and for number and variety of compositions, which even an age of barbarism, could it ever again arrive, never would permit to perish, he stands altogether unrivalled and alone. The Fidelio and Der Freischütz are works of the very loftiest character-the composers have made the most skilful possible use of the enlarged orchestral means placed at their disposal; but if they have equalled some of Mozart's compositions, they have not excelled any one of them; and no other opera, except these two, is for one moment to be compared to any opera of Mozart's. Now this speaks loudly in favour of that compound of opposites, called punch, which Sheridan loved, and Schiller sung, and the living philosopher, Bertuccio di Ambrosio, concocts better than any breathing man, not even excluding Lord Panmure, whose skill and cunning in punchcraft I once thought unsurpassable. But Bertuccio is, in every sense of the word, a great man. But you ask, What has this to do with Mozart ? Why, he composed upon punch. Punch was his favourite liquor; and it is said by the dull, that it shortened his life in the direct proportion that it made it merry. But I do not believe a word of it. I should just as soon believe that Byron died of the gin-and-water on which he poured forth the flowing stanzas of Don Juan, and not of the rascally ignorance of his physician. Of both the words of the poet were true:

"Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their

I do well believe that no man ever had a higher inspiration than Mozart -he was the Shakspeare of music. In all his works, like the great dramatist, he mingles tragedy and comedy, and is equally remarkable in both for the intensity and depth of feeling. What a wonderful composition is his Don Giovanni! How various the characters, how admirably are they not depicted in his music! What character was ever better sustained from first to last than that of "our ancient friend, Don Juan," the heartless libertine ; but one in whom, from his gay and dauntless courage, his graces and accomplishments, we never for a moment lose a breathless interest! We feel towards him as we do towards the Anastasius of Hope's grand romance. Love him we must not, pity him we ought not; but we cannot help admiring-ay, and enjoying him. How heartily one enters into the abandonment of his merriment in the banquet-scene, when he sings to the charms of women and wine! There is such downright earnestness and sincerity in it. And when was seduction ever attempted in such dulcet and harmonious tones as those wherein he addresses Zerlina. The serpent could not have whispered a much softer tale to Eve. How mighty, too, Mozart is in the management of his ghost! Here he shews a genius which Walter Scott and Shakspeare alone share with him. The ghost of Hamlet's father, clad in complete steel, revisiting the glimpses of the moon and making night hideous, is not a whit more dread than the apparition of the commander's statue shaking the earth by its ponderous steps, ushered in by unearthly music and singing in tones that seem to have come from another world, and for once permitted to be uttered in this. Byron's Don Juan is a fine dashing fellow; but the poet was unable,

though he strove, to raise him to the standard of the maestro's Don Giovanni. He describes him thus:

"He was a bachelor of arts, and hearts, and parts,

And had an air soft as Mozart's softest of melodies."

But he never succeeds in impressing us with a sense of his will and power, and at bottom unmitigated wickedness. Don Juan is a pious lad, &c. &c., though he does crack commandments for the sake of bright eyes. He is from first to last an Englishman - the child of a cold clime and not a Spaniard of Seville, whose veins run lava. The Don Giovanni of Mozart, on the contrary, is as regular a hidalgo as blue blood at the boiling point could make him; as fierce and as haughty as Satan; and like him, never humbling himself before any creature mortal or immortal-except the woman he is anxious to betray. He is alienate, too, from heaven, and will no more bow than Manfred before the powers of hell. But the whole opera as a work of transcendent taste and genius, is delicious most exceedingly. You agree with me. I feel glad, Jack, because you do it cordially; and I am happy to see you right when you can give reasons of your own for the conclusion besides those thrown before you. Hush! they are beginning to prepare for the overture to the Zauberflöte. Certainly it is a splendid band in number, and you will soon feel in skill, moreover.

The

ensemble (pardon the foreign word, for I use it in the absence of any English equivalent) is perfect. The same is true of the choruses. The Germans, on their stage, have an advantage which is supreme in its effects -I mean their drill. It has failed them, however, more than once upon the battle-field. After all, the sterling qualities in the military market, are French impetuosity and English pluck. There are but two nations, the rest of the world can shew no more than populaces.

But you are perfectly correct, whatever the Germans may be as a nation, they have numbered in their ranks mighty men. Schiller I greatly admire as I find him in the translations of Coleridge and Churchill.

No, I cannot read German. Coleridge translated the play of Wallenstein; Churchill, the introduction to the two parts of the play called The Camp of Wallenstein. To enter into the spirit of the play, you should first read this; and really it has been put into English after a manner that renders it quite worthy to be bound up with Coleridge's version of the play which, as to the poetical garb

the lofty language in which high thoughts are dressed-is superior to the original. So I have been informed; and so, from the exquisite passages which Coleridge had added, I have no doubt it is. To resume, however; Germany has decidedly furnished to all times the greatest musical composers, without comparison or approach. German music is as superior to Italian music as the rich and accurate language of the old Greeks was to the meagre Latin. Italian music is rarely addressed to any thing higher than the senses; it wants depth, devotion, and earnestness; German music is always addressed to the soul. I invariably feel holier and happier after having listened to an opera of Mozart's or Beethoven's. I feel as if, through the music, I had held communion with thoughts that lay too deep for words. One, also, enjoys the delight of having been engaged upon a perfect work, into every portion of which the mastermind has been thrown. There is no deficiency, as there is no predominance; the orchestra and the vocalists are made to work together on terms of as perfect equality as the singers in a duet; and both are managed, however numerous may be the band, the chief vocalists, and the chorus, with the same consummate ease and with the same singleness of purpose

the same concentration to effect, that the less learned and enthusiastic display with respect to one singer and composers of any other school could one fiddle to accompany. The great charm of the German opera is the ensemble and equality in all points of interest between the vocal and instrumental melodies and concerted pieces; and the conviction that the whole work has been wrought by the inspirations and labour of one mighty mind. In Italian operas your present praise and pleasing recol

lections relate almost exclusively to the singers-Pasta, Grisi, Tamburini, Rubini. The composer is comparatively little thought of: you know that his aria has been wonderfully embellished and improved by the art of the singer, and your gratitude is great in proportion to the vocalist. You reflect, as the notes come back to charm you in your bed,-Oh! these are exquisite! but they are Grisi's. What would they have been from any other lips? None know! but certainly nothing comparable to what they were. And thenceforth, and for ever, Grisi's Mary Magdalene face (as Guido loved to paint the Magdalene) is for ever associated with the air you have heard, and it usurps your memory as a thing of grace and beauty in the precise mode and form in which she executed it, and for this no other can be substituted. But you think little of the composer -the Rossini, Donizetti, Belliniand you dream only of snatches of the opera as sung by this or that performer; the opera, as a whole has raised in you no lofty and soulsearching sensations; there has been nothing of what Aristotle styles a purification of the passions.

In a German opera, on the contrary, you commune with the spirit of the master; and, forgetting singers, fiddlers, and all other accessories, as you would the common file of officers and men in a battle-field, you think of the whole opera with a devotional feeling of the composer's genius. In fact, the very peculiarities and faults of the German character tend to make great musicians-dreaminess, mysticism, enthusiasm, transcendental speculations, intense powers of labour, and aspirations scarcely earthlythese combine in giving their great men the use, as none others have possessed it, of a language whose native seat is supposed to be in another world, and which is intelligible only to the most finely moulded of earth's creatures-those whose minds and bodies are alike attempered and attuned, and of whom you can say, with Dryden,—

Otherwise to speak, I look upon Italy's operatic music (I exclude the church music) to be such to our senses and our feelings as Shakspeare's words might thus describe, or well-nigh thus describe :

"A violet in the youth of primy natureForward, not permanent-sweet, not lasting,

The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more."

On the other hand, one might say of the music of Germany, with Milton, that it is

such as raised

To height of noblest temper heroes old, Arming to battle; and instead of rage Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved

With dread of death to flight or foul retreat;

Nor wanting power to mitigate or suage With solemn touches troubled thoughts,

and chase

Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sor row, and pain,

From mortal or immortal minds."

Ay, they are going to strike up! I know no overtures which are to be mentioned in the same category with that of the Zauberflöte, except those of Der Freischütz and Coriolan. True! one can never tire of the first, -it is so true, so admirable an introduction and exposition of the whole story of the opera. Every thing is shewn you there as in the magic mirror of the wizard: the mutterings of demons and the strivings of the evil one are not made less apparent to you than the passages of free and gentle domestic life under the shadow of the reverent and holy forest. When Weber's demons are on the scene, he seems to make the very air murky by his weird sounds. I quite agree, likewise, with our ancestors, that there is a peculiar sanctity, as well as an instinctive superstition, about the forest, never, with all the imitative aid of Gothic art which is borrowed from the structures of the forest, to be attained in the temple built of men's hands. American Cooper has put this forth in all his novels wherein his great characterLeather Stocking or Long Rifle (he calls him by half-a-dozen names)appears, and he has done it powerfully and justly. You do not know the other overture. Well! I believe

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it is an overture by Beethoven to an opera (never written) on the story of Coriolanus; and, by the majesty of Jupiter Stator, it is composed with Shakspearian ability. The whole story of the patrician's services, pride, wrath, triumphs, vengeance, pious yielding, indignation, death-struggle, and last gasp, accompanied by a faint and final tap upon a muffled drum, which leaves you in abrupt and horror-stricken silence, is told as distinctly to the reader of Sir Thomas North's Plutarch by the sounds of the composer as by the page of the poet. Hush! Grandly done! Encore! Encore! We have the whole house with us! excellent band; with what empressement, precision, and feeling they play! Bravo again! Now for the opera. * * What do I think? I am delighted! Never in my life have I (with one or two exceptions in minor singers) heard an act of an opera more exquisitely performed. And oh what delicious music! I never knew it before except in fragments! How flowing is the melody given to the singers-how delightful the sympathy of the orchestra ! Bravo, maestro! You who, as a musician, combine the inventive genius of Homer and the scientific mind of Newton, bravo! And let us not omit to praise the singers! That man Staudigl, who, as I see from the bill, plays Sarastro, has one of the finest bass voices that was ever heard--the richest, the most flexible; and his style is chaste to perfection, and his feeling to the music of his great countryman is religious and true. Every note he sings bears upon it the imperial impress of Mozart. Surely, it is a pleasure to have a faithful utterance of such notes as Mozart issued! The first woman, too, is an excellent musician, and has great compass of voice, and no inconsiderable powers as a vocal actress. Haitzinger, too, whom we knew of old in Monck Mason's time, has high merit, and great skill and judgment. I like Mellinger, who plays Papageno, moreover, very much. I admire his singing for its correctness, and, if I may so say, appropriateness; and I have a high opinion of his capabilities as an actor. He does not seem to be in big letters in the bills; but I

The only being made to refer to a point whereunto I shall turn directly," the other day" being driven back to the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans. You will recollect the beautiful, and hearth and heart-home superstition of the ancients which connected you with the world of spirits, and infinitely raised your heart and hopes as a child of clay. I mean that about the good and evil genius which attended and accompanied, invisibly, man from the first moment he was born,-the one persuading to good, the other to evil -things of middle essence, called genii, because they have tuition over us from the time we are born (geniti). The old word is geno not gigno. This principle of the existence of supernatural suggesters of good and evil to man, however, is as old as the world, and it is upon this the opera turns. Of course you have a pair of lovers. They are despitefully used by the Queen of Night and her attendants, and comforted by angels of light dressed in white and spangles. But every thing except the music is trash not worth thinking of; and as we have the good fortune not to know a word of German, we shall not be troubled by the abomination of contact with any thing but the music. And the music is certainly, both as regards the solos, the concerted pieces, and the opera, in Mozart's s very highest style of art. Silence! *Now that the Magic Flute has come to its conclusion, you desire to know what I think. I think, from the ineffable beauty of the music, the merits of the performers of all classes, and the genuine enthusiasm of an audience who have felt and enjoyed what they heard, that the German opera has acclimated itself to this country; and that we shall never again pass a season without being able to hear the first of all musical

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