field, in order that Rosetta might, from her
own milking-stool, also obligingly brought
thither by a familiar in a smock-frock, accompany
herself in O no we never mention Her!—
Comical was the roaring nationality of our
naval and military operas, by which their
manufacturers, nevertheless, realised large gains. And
yet, in these works, there was a real applicability
to the untutored taste of the English people,
a certain life not to be altogether despised.
And, in one matter of some consequence, our
fathers were better off than ourselves. The
words of the songs were more frequently written
by shrewd dramatists and skilled versifiers—had
more distinct colour in them than it has been
since thought necessary to try for. The
nonsense and namby-pamby of the worst among
them, could be exceeded by specimens which
have been produced since the Great Exhibition
year of grace, 1851. The best remain without
an equivalent.

Something of a quality more musically
substantial than the above characteristic productions,
was promised by the playfellow of Mozart,
Storace; who, though not averse (as was the
fashion of the time) to laying hands on the
operas of the continental composers with whom
he had been conversant, had received a training
more according to European form and order than
any of the pretty melodists mentioned, and who
might, peradventure, have founded English
opera, had not his career been cut short at an
early period.—That greater English composer
who succeeded him, and supplied our stage, during
a period when it was rich in singers, charming
enough to have led, not followed, the public
—Henry Bishop—exercised an influence on
national opera, fatal in proportion to the amount of
his genius, and the quality of his mistakes and
compliances.—With greater energy of character,
and a finer respect for his art, the composer of
the music to the Miller and his Men, and of the
Shakespeare songs—one who had at his command
such enchantresses as a Stephens, and a Tree,
and such a tenor as Braham in his prime,
might have made a deep print in England's
musical annals—and left behind him permanent
and lasting works—not merely beautiful
fragments and indications hastily patched
together. He had the good fortune, too, of
having at his elbow a neat playwright, and a
pleasing lyrist, in Mr. Planché. But he
permitted every good chance to pass unimproved
—every opportunity of gaining fresh and firm
ground for dramatic music, to slip away under
his feet. He respected neither his contemporaries
nor himself. With power of appreciating
and of equalling the foreign composers, whose
brilliant and pathetic creations were unknown
to the majority of the English (the Italian opera
being still something like an exclusive luxury in
this country), he deliberately allowed himself to
garble, to arrange, to omit, to interpolate, in
presenting their works, under pretext of naturalising
them. To comply with the ignorance of
unmusical managers, Bishop clipped, pruned, and
patched the operas of his betters, even such men
as Mozart and Rossini;—and in his own creations
showed himself too willing to wink at the harp
in the corn-field,—at any nonsense, whatever its
violence to probability, however so greatly at
variance with dramatic character, provided the
ballad pleased the gallery, and brought gold to the
shop-counter. He had his reward in being jostled
out of the English theatre by an inferior set of
men, who knew a foreign trick or two more than
he, perhaps, but "bettered his instruction" in
the licences they permitted themselves, albeit
pretending to a far higher musical completeness
than was the order of his time.

Thirty years ago, however, for better, for
worse, the taste for drama in Music—as
distinguished from the play larded with ballads and
glees—had fairly got hold of our public; and
though we had still such melodists as Horn
(whose Deep, deep Sea, and Through the Wood,
sung by Malibran, are things to remember) and
Alexander Lee, they were no longer sufficient for
a musical stage, on which Der Freischütz and
Masaniello and Robert had been produced, and
had succeeded despite of the meddlers and
manglers. We English were to have regular
operas of our own making, which were to be as
good as any Sonnambula or Semiramide. But
our singers and our music-sellers would have
their ballads still, and these stuck in becoming
places—no matter what the suspense, no matter
what the despair of the scene. And our
composers did not shrink from laying hands on
the wildest French drama done into
ungrammatical prose cut into lengths, or on the busiest
French ballet, demanding the mimic power of
an Elssler to carry it through. There is no
need to draw out a catalogue of the productions
thus poured out during one manager's reign
after another, which no episodical flashes of
talent and invention could save. Written on a
false principle, without a feeling for style—
feebly absurd in language, and affording the
most adroit of actors no chance of expressing
passion or illustrating a story—neither French,
German, Italian, or British—it was impossible
they should last. They have not lasted accordingly;
and at the time present, when a new
campaign is beginning, and the old chime about
"native talent" is sounded in our ears, as if it
was rung for the first time to-day, real English
opera is still as much a thing to seek, as it was
in the more innocent times of the harp in the
corn-field.

On the other hand, in the matter of execution
—the advance made during the past thirty
years has been great and wholesome. Though
we have had no such charmers as the ballad
warblers of the first quarter of the century,
who won their laurels so easily, though we have
had only one distinguished operatic actress (in
the last of the Kembles), correctness in
preparation has become the rule; and all that
subordinate material which is indispensable as basis,
has immensely improved in quality. A favourite
ballad-singer would to-day be ashamed to boast
(as I have heard done) that to learn correctly the
words or the concerted music, or "the business"