of depressing them. The other is the making of
shells out of "chilled iron," which is an iron as
hard and brittle as steel, but with this difference,
that what cost ten shillings may be had for two.
These economies, when we are firing away half
millions and millions every year with blaze
and thunder, are worthy of every consideration.
We have had surely enough of costly
inventions, and yet more costly experiments, in
the direction of targets, rams, iron platings,
shells, and the rest of it, and we seem very little
nearer a satisfactory termination. The only
discovery that we have been helped to, is the simple
one of the homogeneous iron, which is yet no
discovery, and which common sense saw for
itself long ago. Unless flour is well blended,
or dough well kneaded with the familiar
rolling-pin, we shall have but indifferent bread and
pastry. The great Nasmyth steam hammers are
the rolling-pins of the foundry. The Armstrong
"welded coii" is the old twisted rifle barrel over
again. The Palliser gun in all this chaos is clear
and intelligible. It is a resting-place in the
bewildering mystery of experiment and
speculation. It is a certainty, and a cheap certainty.
Will it be believed that there is "sunk" in
these cast-iron guns lying useless all over the
empire a capital of MANY MILLIONS, and that
within a period of only four years a sum of
nearly A MILLION AND A QUARTER was laid out
on these useless engines, which are little more
enduring than fireworks?

      GERMAN OPERA AND ITS MAKERS.

      IN THREE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

THERE is no section of art, in which Fashion
—foolish insensate Fashion—has ruled the
hour more completely, than in that of theatrical
music. A hundred years ago our Walpoles
and Grays, gentlemen who had taken "the grand
tour," and professed connoisseurship in Art,
were sneering at Handel, as an old worn-out
creature crutched up on court influence, merely
because Handel lived in England ignoring
Gluck—dying the while of ecstasy over some
mediocre Italian opera imported from abroad,
written by a man whose name lives only in the
pages of a dictionary. But in the time of
Walpole and Gray, the real culture of, and taste
for music in England,—which had been all but
destroyed by political convulsions, and afterwards
dwarfed and flouted, by a set of brave
spirits, who thought the sounds of their tongues
in the coffee-houses were sweeter than any
"Ausonian Melody"—were at a very low ebb.

The narrowness of our sympathies is
illustrated by our utter indifference to all stage music
such as France could produce. Nay, we are
now only reluctantly waking up to the fact,
that to the Grand Opéra of Paris, shaped in
rigorous conformity to the taste of our neighbours,
all Europe has been greatly indebted for
the formation of dramatic as distinguished from
musical opera. The largest and most deeply
based stone in the foundation of the edifice
was laid by Lulli—an Italian it is true, as
were, after him, Piccini, Sacchini, Cherubini,
Spontini, Rossini—but who was compelled from
the first, possibly by the comparatively
uncultivated state of the art of singing in
France, more largely to study declamatory
passion and scenic fitness, than that melody which
amuses the ear; but which if produced in exaggerated
forms and proportions, ends in abusing the
sense of probability. This subject, however, of
French opera is too large a one to be dismissed
in a paragraph, though we must advert to it,
as illustrating the prejudice which so curiously
veins English connoisseurship, in counterbalance
to an occasional fearlessness in recognition,
such as no other country can lay claim to.
Suffice it to state, that our admission of any
school, and a style, as distinguishing the country
of "our born enemies," dates within the last
quarter of a century. Yet, as could be proved,
French opera, with its own style and school,
was something like a century older than German
opera with its style and school only in
embryo. It is curious to observe how, with
admiration sometimes undiscriminating, and
sympathy not seldom blind, the tide of English
enthusiasm, especially among those who
professed to be scientific and profound, began, so
soon as it took any cognisance of the matter, to
admire everything bearing a German signature.
We had been enthralled by Bürger—we were
melted by Werther. The fashion for German
music spread like wildfire: as irrationally as the
fashion before it which had deified the Farinellis
and Senesinos, and had made serious quarrels
over the rivalry between Cuzzoni and Faustina
on the Italian stage.

The time may have come to look at these
things a little more dispassionately—to arrange
the three schools of opera in Europe in their
right places, without unfair antagonism or
robbery of the just dues of any. For the moment
let us deal with Opera in Germany, and by way
of beginning let us look back for a moment, at
what really was achieved in that country before
Mozart's time.

The courts of the different kingdoms, from
north to south, had Italian companies and
Italian traditions from an early period of opera.
At Hamburg, there was something more
individual—the Hanse Town showing clearly how
the burgher and the merchant, even in a state
of undeveloped freedom, coarse luxury, and
semi-civilisation, could dare and do more than
King or Kaiser, in the fostering of national
originality. The Hamburg opera is illustrated
by three successive names as famous as those of
Keyser, Mattheson, and—HANDEL. The first
kept the stage of Hamburg for forty years—
from his "Basilius" in 1694, till his "Circe"
in 1734, enriching the theatre with one hundred
productions. Where are these now? Dr. Burney
accredits the high praise bestowed on him
by Faustina's husband "II Sassone" Hasse;—
and somewhat incoherently accredits him "with
novelty of passages, with an absence of grace
and facility, with modulation, ingenuity, and