and anecdotes been put on the canvas, and by
hands anything rather than feeble, and yet with
the result which has been already stated in the
question!

One of the most agreeable examples tending
in a contrary direction that we can call to mind,
is Mr. Marcus Stone's picture of Greuse the
Prodigy, detected in illicit drawing, exhibited a
year or two ago at the Royal Academy.

But when we come to Music, the aspect of
matters entirely changes. That peculiar
incarnation of imagination and invention in art,
howsoever closely connected in near relationship
with Poetry, Painting, with even Architecture
(which Goethe called " a frozen music"),
in right of its working out its purposes by aid
of a science of numbers, proportions, symmetry,
has always lived, moved, and had its being
under conditions bearing no analogy to those
under which its kinsfolk may be said to have
flourished. This assertion will not be palatable
to system-mongers, but it is susceptible of
proof, as a brief notice of some of the music,
of which Music has been the theme, will
display and illustrate.

It is noticeable that one of the first— if not
the first— of operas, of which distinct record is
extant— Monteverde's " Orfeo"— is based on
the lovely antique legend, setting forth "Music's
power." The ears that this distinguished Italian
moved by his concords and discords can have
had little in common with those of our time.
The rude, hideous paintings of Margharitone are
hardly further from the finished masterpieces of
the Italian school than are the naked, dreary
chants of one who, in his day, was a deep
thinker and a prescient discoverer from anything
which now passes as melody, or even as
dramatic expression. Since Monteverde's day
the legend has been again and again treated by
poets and composers of every stature; but,
with the exception of Haydn's incomplete
opera, only once treated so as to live. We,
of course, allude to Gluck's music, imperishable,
for the most part, if the epithet can be
applied to any work of art. It was only the
other day that this simplest of operas, and the
oldest to boot which keeps the stage, drew all
Paris— habituated as is the public of that city to
the strongest sensations, to crowds, to
mysteries, to complications of construction, each
one attempting to surpass its predecessor— to
tremble and to weep beneath the spell of truth
and genius. It is true that Gluck's music,
written originally for Guadagni, a male
contralto, and afterwards altered for M. Legros,
one of the high nasal French tenors, of which
the race is, unhappily, not yet extinct, had
never before such a perfect exponent as it
found in the sister of Malibran— the
accomplished and impassioned Madame Viardot. Art
on the musical stage can go no further, and rise
no higher, than in her impersonation. Who that
saw her will ever forget her absorbing sorrow
at the tomb of Eurydice, the rapture which
burst into every feature, animated every fibre
of her frame, and thrilled in every tone of her
voice, when she was permitted to hope that
the beloved one might still be rescued back to
life— the pleading grace, blent with indomitable
resolution, with which she cleft her way among
the grim wardens of Death's prison-house,
subduing them by the charm of song— the anxious,
eager, questioning step with which she went to
and fro among the spirits of the Elysian fields—
the inexpressible triumph of the moment of
recognition, with its celestial music, when her
hand closed on the well-known hand of the wife
so bitterly mourned, so courageously sought— the
desperate after-conflict and despair, when hope
was all but wrecked by her disobedience of the
condition of ransom? Taking every circumstance
and difficulty into account, it may be truly said
that there has been no such personation on
the opera stage in our time— not forgetting
nor undervaluing the Medea, the Semiramis,
the Romeo, of Queen Pasta.

A strange fate has attended this " Orphée,"
as also Gluck's four other grand operas, on
which it is worth while to dwell for a moment.
His music might have been born into the world
to breed controversies. If it have given such
an impetus to the sung drama as no other
operas have done, it has been an object of more
grudging praise, more cavilling objection, more
fierce invective than any body of music which
could be named. To this day there are persons,
conceiving themselves competent judges and
sincere lovers of art, who are tormented with a
desire to drag the king of antique opera from
his throne. They cannot admire Mozart enough,
and therefore they cannot admire Gluck too
little; as if there was not room in the world for
both! Because of the absence of certain technical
qualities, which make the composer of " Don
Juan" a faultless model of symmetry, because
Mozart commanded a more affluent stream of
melody, they will not admit that in the highest
tragedy Gluck holds the stage with a firm grasp,
such as no one else has put forth. Compare his
classical dramas with any that have succeeded
them, and these (Cherubini's "Medea" excepted)
will be found to shrink and dwindle
into a mediocrity and weariness; whereas
Gluck's bear no more traces of age than
do the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Niobe of
antique sculpture. It is idle to reject them
because they are less available for concert
purposes than Mozart's operas. Calculated for
the theatre, they are imperishable, because they
demand the highest dramatic art, and satisfy
the most exacting dramatic sense. And the
injustice is all the more flagrant because
of the large debt owing to Gluck by Mozart.
The cemetery scene in " Don Juan " would
not have been written had there been no
oracle in " Alceste," and in " Orphee" (to
come home from a digression) that the first air,
"Objet de mon amour," with its three-bar
phrases and its cast of melody, contains the
germ of Susanna's " Deh vieni non tardar," can
be denied by no one that studies the strange
intricate questions of coincidence and
reminiscence in Music. The specks on " Orphée"