water had met his end-whether he was murdered or perished by his own act.

It was eighteen months before I heard from Rio, by which time I had arrived at the conclusion that either my cousin Alexander was dead, or that he hated me too violently to put pen to paper. Aurelia believed that death was the reason of his silence. He had died, she believed, of grief, and I was heartily glad, for my own sake as much as for my wife's, when one morning I received a letter from him; for I may as well say her notion that he had died of a broken heart was the cause of many fits of melancholy in her, which rendered me a little peevish with jealousy; so that had Alexander not written, there might by and by have come some little unhappiness into my married life.

He began by saying that he had made up his mind not to write to me at all. He had hated me consumedly for months after reading my letter, and would have been pleased to kill me, only that the voyage home was too tedious and expensive an undertaking for so twopenny an issue. News of the Iron Crown having been found abandoned and in a wrecked condition had reached him before he got my letter, and he concluded that Aurelia and I were at the bottom of the sea. He had written home to the owners of the brig for information, but his inquiries remained unanswered. His getting my letter, he said, was like receiving a missive from the other world, and he swore that before he was one third through it he heartily wished that it had come from the other world, and from the deepest and most fiery part of it too, for to that place did his temper consign me at every full stop he came to. Of Aurelia he desired to say nothing. Women were sent into the world to make fools of men, and not even old age hindered the most of them from struggling on in fulfilment of this mission. But a woman could sometimes make as great a fool of a man by marrying him as

by jilting him. For many months he had been wondering which of us two

-meaning himself and me-was the more deserving of compassion, but now he was no longer in doubt and could only hope I was happy. Aurelia was a beautiful woman, and he had been very much in love with her; but after all beauty is but skin deep. And then, again, people's feelings change wonderfully. Time converts the loveliest face into a mask, and often into a very ugly one; and how swift is the flight of time! We clasp a beautiful creature to our heart, and when she lifts her face from our bosom, lo! we find the angel of Time has been with her, and 'tis all pucker and rheum, crows'feet, sausage-curls, and the deuce knows what besides! As to the durability of sentiment Stop! he'd give me a yarn. He was at a funeral last year. A young wife had died, and the husband was inconsolable. His grief at the grave-side was terrible to witness. His friends had to grasp him by the arms and coat-tails to hinder him from precipitating himself into the yawning chasm when the coffin was lowered into it. He wept, he howled, he tore his hair, he shook his fists at the sky, and asked with streaming eyes what he had done to deserve this dreadful affliction. This emotion was sincere down to the very heels of it. "Four months later,' added my cousin, "I received an invitation to his wedding!"

"And now," continued the letter, "since I have made up my mind to write, I may as well give you and Mrs. Musgrave all the news. Will you ask your wife if she remembers Isabella Radcliffe? No doubt she does. Mr. Radcliffe and Mr. Grant were, I believe, friends, but a coolness sprang up between them some time before the latter left Rio. Though Isabella has not the good fortune to have Spanish blood in her, being indeed purely English, and eminently gifted with her countrywoman's noblest quality-the grand characteristic of the entirely British lass-I

mean loyalty, Dick; she is exceedingly beautiful, nevertheless. Her eyes are violet, richly fringed, her hair auburn, rarest of tints; there is nothing majestic and stately about her; she is merely lovable, plump, fragrant, sweet to see and to hearken to, with so exquisite a contralto voice that everybody calls it a fortune to her. Her papa is dead, and his will appoints that the sum of eight thousand pounds is to be settled upon her when she marries, providing that she does so with her mother's consent, presuming of course the mother to be living. The mother is living, and I have her consent, and perhaps some of these days I may have the pleasure of introducing the prettiest woman that was ever seen in South America to Mr. and Mrs. Musgrave. Happily she resides at Rio, so I shall not be obliged to ask any relative to bring her to me. Be good enough, when you next write, to let me know what I owe you for Mrs. Musgrave's outfit, and for the hire of the cabins of the ship you embarked in. Convey my kind regards to your wife, and believe me, my dear Dick, Yours very truly,

"ALEX. FRASER."

Poor Alec!

Yet this letter magically cleared our home atmosphere. There were no more melancholy references to my cousin's broken heart. I have drunk many a bottle with Alec since, and he is godfather to my second boy, and Aurelia is godmother to his third girl.

So passes the procession of life across the stage of the world. I had advanced but a few steps, so to speak, on the boards when this experience I have written about befell me. My wife and I were young, our hearts had a strong beat, the sun was yet in the eastern heavens, his light very glorious and the land fair and gay with flowers; and now I am hobbling off within a few paces of the dark wing whose shadow, when the actor has entered it, shrouds him for ever from the gaze of the company that sit watching the show. But the western radiance still lingers, the dusk has not yet fallen; and my wife and I, though our clasped hands tremble with the infirmities of age, still walk in sunshine, finding cheerfulness in the lingering lustre, though we know it to be waning fast.

THE enterprise of transplanting "Otello", with the whole La Scala company bodily from Milan to London last July, proved as successful as it was bold. The only undertaking of similar magnitude in our times was the importation a few years ago of a complete German company to play German opera, especially Wagner's later works. That was anything but successful, in spite of the enormous advertisement given by the great Wagnerian controversy; and a similar fate was confidently predicted for the Italian experiment. Indeed its chances of success looked even less; for in the previous case there had at least been the attraction of several operas, whereas it was now proposed to give nothing but one single work throughout three consecutive weeks; that work, moreover, by a man whose name excites no bitter controversy, who is neither derided on the one hand as a charlatan, nor extolled on the other as the greatest genius the world has seen. Nevertheless, contrary to all expectation, it turned out most triumphantly successful; far more so than would be supposed from the accounts of contemporary newspapers which, doubtless for reasons of their own, maintained for the most part a studiously cold attitude. As a matter of fact, the theatre was filled night after night by a genuine and increasingly enthusiastic audience; and that in the face of a rival house enjoying an undeniably successful season. It may be worth while to enquire into the reasons for this really remarkable result. There were two-the performance, and the work itself.

In the first place the performance was one of great excellence. In addition to a conductor who has no living superior, a first-rate orchestra

and chorus, the minor parts were adequately filled; while the two principal artists offered an impersonation of remarkable merit. In speaking of Tamagno and Maurel, it is diffi cult to avoid using the language of exaggeration. But upon full and sober reflection it seems by no means too much to say that, for singing and acting combined, in all probability no better work has ever before been done on the stage by two men together. It is at any rate certain that Tamagno and Maurel have themselves never done so well before, nor indeed anything like it. The opera has clearly inspired them. This brings us to the second point. We find the reason for the unusual excellence of the performance in the work itself. What then is the peculiar merit of this opera? What is its position in the history of the art?

Song is simply extended and magnified speech, and its artistic basis lies in that fact. When any one speaks under the influence of emotion, he unconsciously does three things-he prolongs the sound of the expressive word uttered: he increases the inflection of the voice; and he increases its loudness. The last is much less important than the two former. In proportion to the strength of the emotion are the prolongation, inflection, and (less often) the loudness of the voice, until it becomes what may properly be called a scream as of terror, or a roar as of rage. On the stage, the actor, whose business it is to express emotion, consciously and purposely reproduces this lengthening and inflection of the words. So too does the orator. In oratory it is a common thing to see one speaker exercise an influence upon his audience infinitely greater than another of equal mental gifts and readiness of utterance. The

secret lies in the studied use of the voice. Canon Liddon, for instance, in uttering from the pulpit such a phrase as "a pallid caricature of masculine self-assertion", prolongs the syllables to an almost incredible extent, but with so much art that the hearer is quite unconscious of anything of the sort. He only knows that the words come to him with such force, that they ring in his head and he cannot forget them. Another preacher might say the same thing with the same fervour, but without the voice and the art, and produce no effect at all. There is but one step between this and singing. Salvini, when he says in "Il Gladiatore" Figlia mia with an expression of intense parental tenderness, comes as near singing as is possible. Indeed there is no real break between the two: the one merges almost insensibly into the other; and it is possible to recite a poem, gradually prolonging the syllables, until it becomes distinctly a song. Competent teachers of singing know that the one general principle on which to rely in forming a voice is to make the pupil produce the singing sound on a given note, in precisely the same way as the speaking sound upon the same note. The one is simply a prolongation of the other. The most successful singers are, cæteris paribus, those who most thoroughly carry out this principle, consciously or not. It is this which gives their peculiar charm to such singers as Patti, Sims Reeves, and de Soria. Their singing sounds natural and easy, because it is so. The words seem to drop out in a delightful manner as if spoken, but with a degree of meaning beyond speech. The same thing applies to the music sung. In vocal music the musical phrase is successful in proportion as it approximates to the spoken phrase in form and inflection, and that for two reasons. It expresses the meaning most intelligibly to the hearer, and it lies most naturally for the voice of the singer. It is successful, because intelligible and pleasing. In the best specimens of song the sentiment contained in the

words, whatever it may be, is so exactly expressed by the musical inflections, that it is quite intelligible when sung in an unknown tongue. No one could mistake "Adelaide" for anything but a love-song, or "The ErlKing" for anything but a tale of terror and affright. The poem of "The Erl-King" may be recited with the speaking voice note for note according to Schubert's music, and sound quite natural and effective when so done.

It is necessary to insist upon the artistic status of dramatic song, because, while lyrical and narrative song is universally admitted to be an art, the claim is curiously enough denied to opera. Of all forms of poetry, the one which lends itself most naturally and properly to musical expression is the drama. Since singing is, as we have seen, an extended form of emotional speaking, it follows that opera should be an extended form of drama. Yet it is constantly refused the title of a genuine art at all: it is derided as anomalous; and the feeling entertained for it by most "unmusical" people is one of half-contemptuous toleration, as for a thing necessarily absurd from an artistic point of view, but which pleases their "musical" neighbours The only theoretical objection which can be urged against the musical drama, is that in ordinary life people do not express themselves in elaborate music. But of course, the same objection may be urged against the spoken drama, and especially against the highest form of it, grand tragedy. The stage is not ordinary life. Ordinary life does not consist of kings and queens, of heroes and monsters. In ordinary life people do not speak in verse rhymed or blank. Ordinary rooms are not formed by three walls and an open space; nor are a row of gaslights sunshine. Ordinary life is just what you do not want on the stage, or in any other art. We are suffering only too much from ordinary life in fiction and in the drama. The exact reproduction of

real life, which seems to be the aim of so many novelists and dramatists, is not art. Art is not Nature.

For Art commends not counterparts or copies;

But from our life a nobler life would take,
Bodies celestial from terrestrial raise,
And teach us, not jejunely what we are,
But what we may be, when the Parian
block

Yields to the hand of Phidias.

The musical drama is as truly based upon Nature as is any other art. The real reason why it has met with so much contempt is the great difficulty of carrying it out successfully. Music imposes limits. Both the subject and its verbal handling must be specially adapted to musical treatment, before the immense difficulties of the actual composition are reached at all. It is on this rock that opera has usually struck. Both the play and its poetical treatment have been bad. The fault is invariably laid to the charge of the musician-but most unfairly. It is true that a certain colour is lent to this accusation by the fact that many composers have apparently been too easily satisfied with the libretti provided for them; and many have shrunk from the difficulties imposed by a high ideal. It is so much easier to write a song than an opera; just as it is easier to write a few stanzas than a drama. Hence it happens that too many so-called operas are little more than albums of songs disguised; and so long as the public is content with an album of songs, the supply is sure to follow the demand. But is it to be supposed that composers have insisted on foolish plots and puerile language? On the contrary, the history of the opera is that of a constantly renewed struggle on the part of the musicians to obtain worthy subjects for their muse, a struggle unfortunately for the most part unsuccessful.

The originators of opera in Italy towards the end of the sixteenth century were animated by the purest artistic aspiration, that of re-constructing the Greek drama, which, as we

believe, was musically declaimed; and from them down to the present day we have a long list of great musicians who undeniably appreciated the seriousness of their art, and the necessity of a fine subject for the exercise of it. Monteverde, Purcell, Handel, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Cherubini, Weber, Spohr, Rossini, Meyerbeer, and Wagner may be mentioned, without referring to living writers, as having striven for a high ideal. One proof of the difficulty they encountered is the frequency with which they have had recourse to the same subjects. The story of Orpheus has been set to music by at least five composers, and that of Faust by as many more. Sometimes they have failed altogether to find a subject. Haydn and Beethoven wrote but one opera apiece; Mendelssohn could not find a satisfactory libretto at all until it was too late. The oft-repeated charge of slavish submission to artificial forms of construction and the tyrannical caprices of singers, may be true enough in the case of weaker spirits, but does not apply to the great men whose names have just been mentioned. Handel for instance, who wrote at a time when rules for the construction of opera were the most strict and the most artificial, and when the despotism of singers was at its highest, never allowed either to stand in his way. The same is true to a great extent of Rossini. Purcell was a daring innovator. Gluck ran directly counter to the popular taste of his day in a noble, and to some extent successful, attempt to re-establish the musical drama on a true artistic basis. Mozart threw up at least one librettist in despair. Weber and Spohr invented and successfully carried out a new style, half-way between tragic and comic, which, though not the highest, is yet a serious and worthy form of art. Meyerbeer worked like a slave at his operas, sparing no trouble or expense, and was so particular about the character of his libretti that he quarrelled with his dramatist, Scribe, who was pro