produce only a depressing list of productions of
forgotten industry;—some thousand (to be
moderate) of respectable works having been composed,
produced, succeeded, and died, without making
any sign. The fecundity of the second-rate
Italian opera composers of the eighteenth century
has not been greater—but though slighter,
the traces which they have left are more
numerous. There is hardly a man, even of
mediocre mark among them, some song by
whom does not, from time to time, turn up again
—in nine cases out of ten, fuller of melody, and
not poorer in thought—than the last extravagance
of Signor Verdi and those belonging to his school.

Setting, then, the meritorious opera-
manufacturers of Germany on one side, as without
significance, there remain but two composers
(and the shadow of the second of these) to
speak of as filling the interval betwixt Beethoven
and Herr Wagner. It is true that a
contemporary of Beethoven, Schubert, showed
in his "Lieder" that feeling for melody, and
for the adaptation of sound to situation, as
well as to sense, which ought to have given
many real masterpieces to the German opera
stage. But Schubert, though endowed beyond
most musicians with ideas, was not gifted
with the spirit of discretion. In every work
of any length from his pen, there will be
found a tediousness arising from want of
proportion, and a feebleness of constructive
power, which are fatal when the thing to be
produced is drama in music. Owing to want of
tact, the operas of Cherubini have languished:
and many of the operas of Schubert could never
be brought to the light of the footlights. The
fragments which we know, and the entire work,
"Der Hausliche Krieg," produced not long ago
at Vienna, are curious from the want of that
style which so eminently distinguished
Schubert's shorter vocal compositions and his
pianoforte music,—a want possibly ascribable to
one of his occupations, the writing of pieces to
be introduced into other men's operas. He is
said to have done this in works by Herold and
Auber so successfully, that it was impossible
for those not in the secret to separate the
interpolated from the original matter. His overture
to his own "Rosmunda" is as French as if it
had been born in the Rue Lepelletier.

It was about eight years after " Fidelio" was
produced, and before Beethoven's opera, or
indeed the mass of his other music was received
with any universal relish in Germany, that another
thoroughly individual composer began to
make characteristic and copious contributions to
the stores of stage music in that country. This
was Louis Spohr, one of the most peculiar
figures in the Pantheon—more peculiar than
engaging. Few artists, however, have led such
honourable and industrious lives as he,—or so
little blameworthy. He was born to good and
God-fearing parents; and seems to have felt the
wholesome influence of their early training, in
the ordinance of his career, from first to last.
But the amiability winch has belonged to so many
worse and disordered men was apparently denied
him. His outer bearing was a type of the
manner in which his life was regulated. Gifted
by Nature with a noble and imposing presence
(possibly he was one of the tallest violin-players
that ever presented himself in an orchestra), and
with a manner which might take some of its
tincture from sincere uprightness, but which
was certainly not graced by that considerateness
for others which endears its possessor—Spohr
strode on through life with a straightforward
self-assertion, but without any apparent care for
much beyond his own concerns, or much will or
power to appreciate the great men of the
golden age of modem music, into the midst of
which genial fate had thrown him. His
autobiography, published the other day, is a
revelation as speaking as it is singular;—from the
honest and unveiled self-complacency with which
its writer devotes himself to his own doings,
and the poor (rather than grudging) measure of
observation he could bring to the productions of
his contemporaries, and to their characters. He
is energetic in describing the odd outrageous
gestures of Beethoven when conducting an
orchestra; but shows himself little capable of
owning that that storm-tossed and ill-starred poet
was withal a being of a height and a grandeur—of
a force in flight like an eagle's—of a brilliancy of
invention as though lightning could be fixed as
sunlight—transcending those of any predecessor
or contemporary. He is critical, again, almost
cynical, in citing some of the carelessnesses and
common-places in Rossini's music (just as if he
was not to live to express and exhibit the
common-places into which a heavier and thicker
creative power can fall), but cold to the exquisite
spontaneity of Southern beauty, which
breathes in the works of that captivating master:
—not so much antagonistic, perhaps, as incapable
of receiving. The harp-playing of Dorette, his
wife, a tearful sensitive woman, whom we cannot
help suspecting her lord and master (howbeit
unconsciously) worked very hard, his own
successes as a consummate performer on the violin,
his respectable resolution to support the dignity
of Music, in the face of the etiquette by which
it was treated as an offering of vassalage, rather
than as an art to be cherished, in too many
German courts,—figure in every page of this
record; but there is not a single one containing
such bright thoughts, such charming pictures,
as light up the letters of one who, it may be,
as mannered in music as Spohr, was as universal
in his sympathies as Spohr was not—the engaging
and great-hearted Mendelssohn.

These traits and characteristics have not been
assembled with any miserable desire to cast dirt
on an honest man's grave, but rather to show
cause why the productions of an artist who was so
self-engrossed as well as so enterprising, should
not contain that universal appeal to sympathy
and admiration which makes real works of art
endure, whereas the manner of mechanism must
pass away. It is observable, however, that
Spohr, while trammelled by egotism to a degree
never perhaps equalled in art save by that
greater genius, Wordsworth, was in advance of