days of her girlhood appear to tinge
every line of her last will. Her very codicil is
softened with a touch of her first and fondest
love. In it she gives to the priest of the
church, where she well knew that her Cousin
John would serve and sing, "the silver chalice
gilt, which good Master Maskelyne the goldsmith
had devised for her behoof, with a leetle
blue flower which they do call a forget-me-not
wrought in Turkess at the bottom of the bowl,
to the intent that whensoever it is used the minister
may remember her who was once a simple
shepherd-maid by the wayside of Wike St. Marie,
and who was so wonderfully brought, by many
great changes, to be the Mayoress of London
citie before she died."

MUSIC ABOUT MUSIC.

CHAPTER II.

THOSE which may be called the outlying
contributions to the library of music about Music
are various, numerous, and full of interest.
Only a few of the principal ones can be touched
wiihin our limits.

Among these, Spohr's symphony "The
Consecration" (long incorrectly known in England
as "The Power") "of Sound," assumes a
commanding place. It is, in many respects, the
best and most original instrumental composition
by that very peculiar master; most mannered of
the Germans, in the cloying monotony of his
style; a man who, apparently, was tormented
with the hallucination that the fantastic was his
element, yet who had probably less fantasy (to
use the word in its restricted sense) than any
writer who ever covered paper so profusely as
he did. His "Walpurgis scene "in "Faust"
was written years before "Der Freischutz"
was thought of. He had taken in hand the legend
which prompted Weber's most popular opera
ere Carl Maria had set to work on "Zamiel"
and the "Wolfs Glen;" and, later, with a
modesty which did not always mark his artistic
proceedings, retired from the field in favour of a
younger rival. He was attracted by the ghastly
legend of "Pietro von Abano." He was
precursor of the present school of modern German
rhapsodists, with their muddled cant in music
about "inner despair," "aspirations after the
unintelligible," and what not, by trying to
describe with his orchestra the struggles of a
human soul. And yet all the above music
is the weakest of the weak in point of
fancy. A strange hankering for one so
self-engrossed, so little sympathetic with
the labours of others, so capricious in his
likings and dislikings, yet, withal, in some points
so stationary, as we knew Spohr to have been,
before these humours were tabulated by himself,
in his staid, amusing, and characteristic
autobiography. There is, however, some explanation
and justification of this hankering in his
"Consecration of Sound" symphony. It is not without
quaint, elegant, and stirring inventions. The brief
opening prelude, "laid-out" to represent Silence
ere Sound was born, is problematical enough,
no doubt; but the wakening of the music of
Nature—expressed in the whispering of the
winds, as they sway the cedars, in the murmuring
of brooks, as they hurry down to swell the
great river, bearing its tribute to the sea, the
multitudinous song of "the sweet birds " in the
boughs "above replying" (as Cowley hath it), are
adroitly and effectively combined in the opening
movement, which, as a work of art, has never
been exceeded, not even by Beethoven, in the
delicious descriptive andante of his "Pastoral
Symphony." More ingenious, yet little less
excellent, is the combination of cradle,
serenade, and dance tunes wrought up into the
second movement. The third one, the March,
is grandly pompous in theme, a replica (as
painters say) of the striking opening of Spohr's
"Berggeist" overture, though made tedious by
the episodes in the middle portion. Towards its
close the Symphony flags, the work being on a
scale of length which Spohr was unable to
sustain. But, allowing for this drawback, it is
still one of the most remarkable productions of
the century, and among the most noticeable of
the tributes ever paid by musician to the power
of sound.

Then there are lyric dramas of later date than
the musical one founded on the myth of Orpheus
—which are not to be forgotten in the story of
music about Music. The historical anecdote—
as "washing and wearing" a one as the legend
of the Three Blue Balls, the pawnbrokers'
insignia, commemorated by Charles Lamb, as a
stock piece of established paragraph-stuff to be
used when newspaper columns grew meagre
showing how Stradella, the singer, by his voice,
subjugated and disarmed assassins hired to
destroy him by a rival, has tempted more than
one opera-writer. Thirty years ago it was taken
in hand for Paris, by that elegant composer
Louis Niedermeyer; but his success in handling
it was not what had been anticipated by
his patrons. These belonged to "the upper
ten thousand," and the time was a brilliant
one. Such amateurs were then living in Paris
as the Prince de la Moskowa, who showed solid
knowledge as a composer, and the Prince
Belgiojoso, possessor of the most magnificent tenor
voice in my recollection, managed by him like
an artist; and these and their circle befriended
and encouraged the gentle and gracious Swiss
composer, and prophesied a brilliant issue for
his "Stradella." But those were the golden
days of the grand opera, and its stage then
was preoccupied by such more muscular works
as "La Juive," on the most forcible of opera
stories, and "Les Huguenots," and Taglioni and
the Elssler sisters were dancing there to Adam's
delicious ballet music, and the bloom had not
been worn off "Robert," and "La Muette," and
"Guillaume Tell," and the ball-scene in
"Gustave." With all the aristocratic patronage
accorded him, Niedermeyer had neither the
power nor the will to go up and down what
have been quaintly called "the back stairs of
conciliation." While Meyerbeer was feasting
his critics (there were such things, it was said.