present season. No great and charming work of the lyric drama is to be had from abroad since "the cold chain of silence has hung over" the lyres of Rossini and Meyerbeersince the sweet, heart-breathing notes of Bellini were frozen at their source, and Donizetti, poor compared to these, but transcendantly superior to Verdi, has been smitten with one of

the saddest forms of mental alienation. As far as we can judge of the state of musical science and genius in Europe at present, we are disposed to think that if a really great lyric drama, one which should endure in the minds, the memories, and the affectionate regards of men, is to be had any where, it is to be had here --here in the capital of the British empire, and for this work we should look to the composer of Maritana, who has deep knowledge and finest faculties as a musician; who has fancy, and feeling, and freshness, and gushing inspirations as a melodist; who has the vigour and capabilities of a bold and original thinker, and, we do believe, the touch of genius. We say all this, not so much from what, under many disadvantages, he has done, but from what, under happier auspices, we are satisfied he is capable of doing. But if he is to do it, it must be a work of time and labour, performed in those intervals of free leisure which his professional avocations may afford him. And, above all, he must eschew the Poet Bunn, St. George, and Co., his semi-demi-musical troops, and his pseudo-lyric theatre. Mr. Wallace must get a good libretto on some well-known (we are altogether for the Horatian alternative of the famam sequere) and popular sorry, and it should be German or Italian (German for choice), that he may have the benefit of wise and earnest singers, and trained and thoughtful chorusses, that can expound and express his work, and then he may at once enter himself as a candidate for the Parnassus stakes. And we will answer for it that our generous and high-hearted friend, Staudigl, who is now the manager of the Imperial Royal Theatre at Vienna, would cheerfully afford him the use of a course to run his nag upon. But we have rather ourselves, old weightcarriers as we are, bolted off the

course, with something of an early skittishness, in these observations about modern operas, in running beyond the actual into the possible. Let us return!

Enough has been said about the difficulty of obtaining good modern operas. But the embarrassment to a manager, in an attempt to procure good singers for such a house as our Italian theatre, is no less great. The number from which to choose singers, of assured and indisputable excellence, is very small indeed, and, thanks to Mr. Lumley, we have still, as before, a majority of them this season. Giulia Grisi, as first lyric actress, reigns supreme in Europe, and never in her life did she look better, or sing better, or act better, than she has done throughout this season. Mario, now that the most exquisite and poetical of vocalists, Rubini, has retired to repose upon his well-won laurels, and to enjoy in his own lovely native land his princely wealth and an almost boundless power of doing good in his locality,

-Mario, we say, is, in our opinion, the first tenor singer in Europe. He has not the intense energy of Duprezas a lyric actor-intense almost to painfulness in the hearer and spectator. He has not the histrionic powers of Moriani-powers of a far higher, more refined, and genial order than those possessed by Duprez; but Mario has a voice pure and touching in its tones, bird-like often in the easy, gentle clearness of the intonations, caressing in its accents when breathing of love, and always, when he sings as he has sung lately, under the consciousness of good voice and the exhilaration of buoyant spirits (whether the exhibition of the artist's powers be in weal or woe), "beautiful exceedingly"a voice (Oh! Cobbett, if you could only see this wretched, slipshod sentence, how disgusted you would be with one who ever and aye admired your pure, nervous, idiomatic English so much, and ought not, in a vein however careless, to sin against its vigorous purity; but, never mind, though it were as bad as the worst Brougham ever spoke or wrote, we must try and shove it on, neck and crop, to an end)—a voice-a sweet, pure, natural voice-to which neither of the others can now, nor never

could pretend. They, too, as vocalists, and admirable, though artificial vocalists, as too palpably they were, are now deteriorating; their organs, from the constant force and strain upon them, are becoming "used up," and this in the case of so great a vocal actor as Moriani is especially to be lamented. But Mario, on the contrary, is improving yearly; the higher he ascends the hill of fame the better he finds his wind; and the progress that he has made even since last season is con. spicuous. He has increased in spirit of bearing and energy of delivery, in the exhibition alike of passion and of pathos, and, in fact, in every quality and characteristic that tend to make the intellectual and accomplished vocal artist. Lablache, the illustrious singing man mountain who acts so marvellously well alike in tragedy, comedy, and farce, and pours forth such weird notes, whether the theme be grave or gay, is in every respect as great as ever he was during the whole course of his right musical, melodious, and harmonious lifetime. And F. Lablache, his son, is an extremely useful, and should be more than he is made, a markworthy assistant to those who fill the first places in many operas, and is improving sensibly both as an actor and a singer. As to the three first, they stand bright, peculiar, and alone in their several departments.

We have to regret the loss of the exquisite Persiani, whose place it will be long ere we shall see adequately filled; yet it must be admitted that Madame Castellan forms what, in the phraseology of the stage, might, we believe, be styled an excellent double to her in some of her most famous characters, that is to say, a performer one would never think of putting into the part while the services of the original possessor of it at the theatre were available, but who, nevertheless, sings and plays extremely well to all ears, and very charmingly to those which are not rendered fastidious by their familiarity with the efforts of her predecessor. But, in truth, Madame Castellan only wants physical strength and power of organ to be a great singer on a stage like that of the Italian Opera; she has many requisites of a first-rate lyric actress, and,

though something languid in action and utterance, and devoid of high enthusiasm, and so incapable of the charming abandonment to the impersonation of a character, and the temporary identification therewith, which it causes and creates, and albeit unconscious of, and unimpelled by, inspirations like Malibran and Grisi, she is yet an acquisition of vast value to the theatre. There is another individual who holds a prominent and responsible position amongst the leading artistes of the lyric drama - we mean Fornassari ; in nine parts out of ten which he plays little can be said abstractedly and positively in his favour; but, comparatively, he is better than many others in the same walk who have been brought over, and very inferior absolutely, amongst those who might possibly have been engaged, to such men only as Tamburini, Ronconi, and Pischek. And when we say possibly, we mean it in the absolute sense, without in the least insinuating probability, being, as we are, well aware that the difficulty of securing the services of any one of the famous three to complete for many operas the supremacy of our Italian company, might have been insurmountable. Sooth, to speak, we are confident Mr. Lumley has done all that lay in his power to get the best company as well as to procure the most desirable novelties. And throughout the season many of those operas which are always welcome, always enchanting, have been performed with consummate excellence; Rossini's Il Barbiere, La Gazza Ladra, Il Matrimonio Segreto-oh! and a number of others too numerous to mention and too well known to all ladies and gentlemen in town and (thanks to railways) in the country to mention. The long Thursdays have been very attractive. The quantity of entertainments for the casual visitor crowded into the space of a single night was in itself wonderful; and on most occasions all the entertainments have been no less remarkable for their individual excellence than for the profusion with which they were thrown before the public.

Of all the operas produced during the season, perhaps, on the long Thursdays, the opera hailed with

We

the greatest satisfaction was THE Don Giovanni, delightful always if you can command the cordial services of a competent orchestra, and transcendantly delightful when you can find (most rare it is to find) a band of lyric artists who can do their duty in the march of this glorious work with that orchestra. have had the felicity to hear Tamburini (Don Giovanni), Rubini (Don Ottavio), Lablache (Leporello), Sontag (Donna Anna), Malibran (Zerlina), assisted by persons who, one and all, supported their respective characters most ably and right well, so that the thrice-glorious work-the Iliad of operas-was performed with perfect ensemble! But let that be! We shall never, never-long as the prognostication of that sad and ominous word is-never hear the like again. But, as the Emperor Augustus-under such circumstances of regret and disappointment, with regard to many things, appreciated while they were, now loved and lost, which affect us daily, as though in our declining years it were the fall of some shower of autumn leaves, no more to be renewed for us in the fresh, green, dewy glories of their predecessors-was wont, in his quaint and semi-jocular proverbial phrase, "Contenti simus hoc Catone." And so we would fain be, but we cannot stomach so coarse an actor and so hoarse a singer as Fornassari in Don Giovanni, nor can we stand Mademoiselle Sanchioli in Donna Elvira, who, as far as the spectators in the theatre can practically judge, gets through a large portion of the part in very extravagant dumbshow, or approve of any of the impersonations of the characters as represented this season, excepting those which were sustained by Grisi, Mario, and Lablache, and we may add, in a mitigated degree, Castellan and F. Lablache. In a word, the great work, though it drew, as it always will draw, houses, was inadequately rendered. The manager was right in giving this opera, so enthusiastically beloved by the English public," the sons of Woden's race," and we sincerely believe that it was his misfortune, and not his fault, that in the vocal department he could not set it forth in better guise. We must add, however, that more might

to say,

have been done with it if he had looked on it with the same liberal eye as to the musical requirements and accessories that he did upon the Verdian novelties, so utterly paltry in comparison. The close of the last act was sadly shorn of its tremendous effects in gleams of reckless light and the overwhelming shadows of demoniac influence by the want of the band upon the stage itself and by a sort of general parsimony with regard to the musical and other accessories for carrying the wonderful composition to its appalling end, which, in one so lavish of expenditure in other pieces, whether for the display of the drama lyric or saltatory, is extraordinary.

66

Passing from the opera to the ballet, look at Lalla Rookh! How lavish the expenditure on this pageant! And beautiful it is in its way, very beautiful; but, as we gaze, we feel that soul is wanting there." It has been said, truly enough, by some of the more honest of the critics for the morning papers that a better theme for a ballet might have been found in any one of three of the poems,"The Veiled Prophet," "The FireWorshippers," or the "Light of the Harem." Undoubtedly it might! But, perhaps, our recent victories and the connexion of names of localities, now suddenly as familiar at our own firesides as household words, might have guided the choice towards the Bridal Pilgrimage, the poet's book having been seized upon by the ballet-maker, àpropos to the Punjaub, the Jumna, the Valley of Cashmere, and Lahore. But really the English, when they enter a theatre in which their gratification to soothe an idle hour is to be ministered to by foreign singers and dancers, hired for the purpose, leave their pride of race and their deep, inbred, and ineradicable nationality at the door with their money. They come to be amused simply, and need not to be reminded that, with only such slight exceptions as prove the general rule, unwinged Victory has always marched in their van on land, and taken its secure and placid resting-place, amidst the storm of fight, on the main-mast of our admiral at sea. We seek not in our sports to be instructed, for it is felt,

with a proud consciousness, in every pulsation of our hearts, that ours is "The inviolate island of the sage and free,

The beautiful, the brave, the lords of earth and sea."

"Sed contenti simus," &c., especially with the ballet-master in question, and admit that, aided by the director's munificence, he has made a most gorgeous spectacle. He has tried hard to realise Tom Moore's pageant of pictured words in the first scenes, and, indeed, throughout all that belongs properly to the romance. Fanny Cerito was the TulipCheek, and in all she had to do preserved her well-earned fame as a very accomplished and charming dancer and mimiste. There was another ballet for Lucille Grahn, who is decidedly one of the most graceful, and delightful, and intellectual dancers of the day, and who is destined, probably before long, to take one of the highest places in the highest department of her art. Much, however, as one likes Fanny Cerito and Lucille Grahn, it is impossible not to regret the absence of Carlotta Grisi-charming Carlotta!-from the proper sphere of her action, and to think that she should have been induced to waste her graces upon the frequenters of Drury Lane. But to return to Lucille's ballet; it was one of those feminine shoulder-arms, &c. businesses, which we have had so frequently at all our metropolitan theatres at either side of the Thames. It was very pretty in its way; but the peculiarity in our mind about it was, it set us thinking how this nonsense about Amazons (of whom we have read a great deal generally in our

time, and lately in George Grote's book on Greece in particular), and other fighting women in large organised and disciplined bodies (for nobody doubts the pugnacious qualities and propensities in any individual specimen of the fair and gentle sex), came to have overrun the world. And our conclusion is, that, like every thing great and glorious in the olden time, wise and wild, fantastic and superstitious, genial and dread, it came to us as to all others from the far East. It seems that, from the most remote times in Persia, there was an armed guard of women, who kept watch and ward over the innermost portions of the king's or shah's palace, where his own women-the fresh, and fair, and lovely-and his treasures were kept. An old historian, whose pleasant page is now spread open before me, says,

"The guards of the harem are composed of three different bodies. 1. The white eunuchs, who guard the outer gate. These never come in sight of the women, lest it should excite some amorous inclination in them, as 'tis said. 2. The black eunuchs. These come generally from the coast of Malabar in India, and not from Affrick. Their station is in the second court, and the eldest and most deformed are picked out of these to attend the ladies, and to carry messages backwards and forwards. rest are employed in the gardens, kitchens, or other places remote from the women's apartments. The third and innermost guard is composed of women, who are commanded by some antiquated matron, that receives orders from the prince himself, and, by the eunuchs which attend, conveys his majesty's command to the guards without."

The

Of the six public men whose names are enumerated above, and who have more or less distinguished themselves both in the prolonged agitation against the Corn-laws and at the recent crisis, there is not one who would be entitled to a place among the orators of the day, were we to exercise a strictly critical judgment upon their several merits as speakers. They are all men over whom political feelings and considerations hold paramount sway, and who would consider the attainment or the display of oratorical power or skill as of minor importance compared with the straightforward expression of their opinions or sentiments, and the devotion of their moral energies, unimpaired by personal ambition or vanity, to the accomplishment of success in the cause to which they may severally have devoted themselves. They are politicians by necessity and orators by accident; and it would be unfair indeed to subject them to the test of any very severe criticism, when they avowedly repudiate all that pretension to excellence in the examination of which criticism is legitimately applied. But they have all, in their several spheres of action, and most of them for several years past, taken a most prominent part in the great question which has agitated this country. If others have been greater or more brilliant as orators, whether for or against the cause of protection, these have been the hardworking men. They have held the labouring oar. The public mind is full of their doings, and the public ear haunted by the echo of their talk. In parliament, at public meetings, our ears are familiar with their names, and the political chronicles of the hour record their deeds with scarcely less pomp or ceremonial of importance than those of their more fortunate and famous coadjutors. It is, there

fore, strictly in accordance with the general plan on which this series of papers is composed to include a notice of such men. A more fitting time than the present could scarcely be chosen for the purpose, because, when the Corn-law crisis has entirely passed away, their names will soon glide into comparative oblivion; or, if they busy themselves with questions that may hereafter arise, they will probably be supplanted by other men who will have a more legitimate right to interfere--the same right which their own position has given them to be regarded as authorities on the corn question. Their eloquence alone would never have given them the influence they possess. Their position, whether given them, as in the case of the peers, by the constitution, or earned for themselves, as in the case of the Commoners, has also been an essential element in their success.

Of the six individuals whom we have selected, four have been steady and consistent advocates of their several opinions during many years; the other two have been only recent champions. The Duke of Buckingham and the Duke of Richmond belong to the first class as advocates of protection; the Earl of Radnor and Mr. Villiers as assertors of the truth of the principles of free trade. Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Bright have only of late shot up into any degree of importance, the latter having the start over his noble competitor in point of time. They are both accidents of the League agitation; though whether their exertions will stop short with the accomplishment of repeal of the Corn-laws is very doubtful indeed, for each has exhibited symptoms of a very determined character indicative of ulterior political views, of course in totally opposite directions.