her comrades—tired, and in their great-coats,
ready to go home or to go out to supper—might
be seen waiting in "the wing" till she had sung
the final rondo. Persiani's version of that air
lives among the most complete of musical
satisfactions recollected. Its fascination was strong
enough to enthral even such opera-goers (their
name is Legion) as care only for a pretty voice
or a pretty woman. The conquest told much to
"the score" of Persiani—something, not less
real, to the story on which was built the score
of Bellini.

Next came an English Amina—not merely an
Amina in English—competent in right of
natural dramatic genius, powers acquired for its
expression, to compete with any of the Italian
singers of any time—the last of the great
Kemble race.—Here again, however, as in
Pasta's case, Nature had set her face against the
Maid on the Mill-wheel.—Form and features
were opposed to the attempt. There was a
certain heaviness in the quality of Miss Kemble's
voice which has nothing to do with dramatic
versatility. Those laugh the best on the stage
who can cry the best. Pasta's smile was as
glorious and natural as her sorrow was
subduing—as her wrath was appalling; but the
smile was on the noble and serious features of
the Muse of Tragedy; and the many are apt
to read such smiles as mere grimaces. Miss
Kemble's Amina—admirable in many respects—
was the least admirable among the few parts
played by her during her bright and brief career
on the English opera stage.

Writers of musical history will find a
wondrous theme in the story of the next Amina—
the Swedish lady who, on our Italian stage,
made play-going London—whether grave or
gay—madder than London has been made
mad since the opera-days when (as Byron
said in his stinging lines) crowds jammed into
the pit, country ladies fainted and were carried
out, and dandies were civilly rude to the same
provincial females, in the eagerness of their
worship of (sic in Byron) "Catalani's pantaloons."
How the Lind-fever was begotten—how
nourished—on what basis the excitement rested—
are so many facts of no importance to this sketch.
That it lured scrupulous divines out of their
churches—that it threatened, for a nine months'
wonder, the whole rival dynasty of opera with
revolution, shame, and overthrow—are truths
which have nothing to do with the real musical
genius of an artist, even of genius as singular, as
successful, as she was.—Without doubt, Mdlle.
Jenny Lind, with her large and speaking eyes
and her clustering fair hair, will be remembered
as the type of the Swiss peasant-girl, real
and rustic, in all her simplicity and sincerity.
Her northern voice, too, was admirably suited
to Bellini's music;—the power which she
possessed of drawing out its tones to any
required strength or softness, made her more fit
to present what may be called the ventriloquism
of the sleep-walking scenes than any one
before her or since. She could act, further,
just to the point of sorrow and gentle woe
which the situations of the tale demand.—She
could take, moreover (this was less fair), what was
not her own, in the fulness of her determination
to "have and to hold" her audience.—In the
chamber scene of her detection—by way of
showing the splendour of her upper notes—
she quietly appropriated the music of her
lover's part, choosing to dominate in the
moment of her disgrace and suspense, rather than
to be struck down by them. This usurpation
passed undiscovered. It was in some measure
redeemed by the extreme and touching beauty
of her singing, in the long-drawn slow movement
of her second sleep-walking scene: just
where Amina wakens. Nothing more carefully
devised than this—nothing in which the art
which conceals art is seconded by congenial
Nature, could be conceived. The soft, sad,
slow notes seemed to flow from lips as totally
unconscious as were the fingers which let slip
the flowers—that poor battered treasured token-
nosegay—last forlorn relic of Amina's
betrothal (her token-ring having been reft from
her). There was a wondrous fascination, in
that musical scene—not wholly belonging to
the singer, nor to her looks, nor to her voice,
but in part, too, to the story and to the music.
—In the last joyous outbreak which follows
this dream, Mdlle. Jenny Lind was inferior as a
singer to Persiani, and as an actress-and-singer-
in-one to Malibran.

Next came Malibran's younger sister, one of
the greatest artists of any time, happily still
living to show the world how Genius can be lord
of all, when the expression of a dramatist's thought,
or the representation of a musician's ideas, are
in question. Her Amina was remarkable, not
for its musical treatment (because consummate
art is, in music, synonymous with the name
of Viardot), not for her voice, not for her
pleasant demeanour (infinitely simpler and less
feverish than her sister's), but because of the
wondrous deadness of the sleep thrown by her
into the scenes of the girl who had to walk over
the mill-wheel to clear herself. Without Lind's
long respiration, without rare beauty of tone—
with something by nature quick and impulsive
in her Southern composition—Viardot worked
out another corner (till then unexplored) of
Bellini's opera.

There may be twenty (for aught the Sybils
know) new renderings of the hopes and fears of
the Singing Sleep-walkers to come. Ere we
name the last and youngest, it should be told
that Sontag, too, after breaking her twenty
years' silence, was tempted by the tale and the
music on her return to the stage; too late, as it
proved, though her excellent tact always bore her
above failure—that the genial Alboni was
fascinated into forgetting every disqualification of voice
and figure, in the hope of making so favourite a
part her prize. A vain fancy! Not even her
beautiful, full, languid contralto tones, and her
faultless execution, could carry the enterprise
through. It was more curious than exciting to
see with what solid and demure carefulness she
braved the ordeal of the perilous walk above