spoken. He had a real genius, a spirit of melody
within him, which set him on high and apart
among the people who to-day make tunes without
time, and who arrange the same to words on
some notion (dim and distant enough God wot!)
that poetry is possibly more poetical than the
pence-table. He had a true, appreciating relish
for Shakespeare;—and though he could be careless,
common, coarse even, in many of his
concessions and spoliations of foreign music—
and his vulgar things aimed at the shilling gallery
—Bishop was a man of genius. Among the
many uses to which the plays have been put were
those belonging to a time when English opera was
weak and undecided in its form, yet when the
stage had such charmers as a Stephens and a Tree
—no great dramatic artists, it is true, and less
accomplished musicians than are demanded by
modern intelligence, but in beauty of voice, and
gracious refinement of manner, not approached
by any of their successors.—For them were
many of Shakespeare's plays enlarged with
introduced music by Bishop: a large portion of which
is excellent, the words being drawn from the
dramas and the poems. He was like other fertile
musicians—Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Signor
Rossini—given to thieving. Memory cannot
help it: and there are as few original tunes,
perhaps, as there are original tales. The grand
bravura from Vinci's Artaserse, " Vo solcando,"
can hardly have been " out of mind" when he
threw off "Bid me discourse;" but the coincidence
does not destroy the youth of that beautiful song.
We have never admired Sir Joshua's "Mrs.
Siddons as the Tragic Muse" less because we
have known of the picture by Domenichino in
which the attitude is all but identical—to the
demolition of a favourite anecdote, that it was
invented by our Tragic Muse. Nor do we
care much if the great Rubens's " Deposition"
at Antwerp was suggested by an Italian print.
The daintiness and perfect freedom of " Bid me
discourse," the becoming display of a sweet
voice which it encourages, are in time, and tone,
and tune with the delicious words. The latest
singer of it, perhaps, was also musically the best
—Madame Sontag. Her delicacy, her abandonment
to the poetry of the song, are never to be
forgotten, nor her beautiful pearly English, without
a touch in it of foreign over-precision. Like
other composers (and thieves), Bishop thieved
from himself—indulged largely in repetition.
There are three after-draughts from the spring
which had yielded " Bid me discourse." " Should
he upbraid" was the best of these;—of course
because that graceful song was also written to
Shakespeare's words.

Bishop, too, was great in Shakespeare duets,
and in these, again, he stole from, or repeated
himself, without tear or apology. " As it fell upon
a day," " On a day" (both introduced into plays,
as has been mentioned), were again repeated
or had been foreshadowed (?) in " Orpheus with
his lute;" that sweetest of all the songs—that
loveliest, simplest, briefest tribute to the power
of sound ever thrown off by music clad in
mortal words. Again and again has it
fascinated composers of every strength, of every
time. Linley treated them well, though in
too patchy and ambitious a fashion; Mr. Hatton,
not long ago, skilfully, on the revival of the
historical play by Mr. Charles Kean;—but the
best setting of them (and a score rise up to
memory) is the last one, from a woman's hand, and
an amateur one, moreover the song by Miss
Gabriel. There is yet a Shakespearian duet in
another form, measure, and humour, which must
be named ere we take leave of Bishop. This is,
"Say, though you strive to steal yourself
away," than which few more charming two-
part songs have ever been penned. The
composer, however, has availed himself of the
subtlety of the words too courageously: for the
sake of his effects, escaping from his text more
than his wont. The duet, however, is an
excellent one. There have been few, if any, so good
and so individual written in England since
Bishop's time.

With his name, then, I had best stop; the
catalogue, as was said on the outset, not
pretending to be complete. There are overtures
by the twenty, ditties by the hundred, glees by
the thousand, which could be told over. In
what has been said in the works I have selected,
how wide and varied and universal is the range
of sympathy and indication sketched out of all
time —for all men in all the Arts!

AN IRON STORM AT SHOEBURYNESS.

THE reader has probably observed, that at
the point where a narrow but populous
thoroughfare joins some larger and still more
frequented roadway, the angle of the
kerbstone is sometimes quite rounded off by the
continually rushing traffic, and is an angle
no longer. Now, there is a certain water
thoroughfare in this country, called the Thames;
and those who pursue it to the particular place
where it rushes into the sea, will observe that the
continually alternating traffic of the fresh water
downward, and of the salt water upward, has
entirely rounded off the corners of that portion
of Great Britain which lies at that point of
junction, where our fine old river runs into the
German Ocean.

At one of these turning-points or corners
there is situated a town which is, perhaps, the
most detestably hideous place upon the surface
of the globe—I say this, knowing Woolwich and
Chatham, and fully conscious how briskly they
compete for the proud distinction. The name
of this victorious place is Sheerness. Sheerness
is the most odious place that man—making the
most of the natural aids at his command—has
ever succeeded in constructing. No other town
can enter into competition with it. There is
but one Sheerness—though it must be owned, in
common justice, that Woolwich is its Prophet.

At the other and opposite corner to that occupied
by this detested settlement stands
Shoeburyness. Shoeburyness is a place to which I
would recommend any gentleman who is fond of