movement to the windows, "but ye're not agoing to pop at me when my back's turned-so here's off.”

Bosberry instantly rushed upon him, and a fearful struggle ensued, during which the pistol, either by accident or design, was discharged, and the pier glass 48-in. by 56-in. was shivered into a thousand pieces.

The noise brought all the family into the room! There lay Bosberry in the centre of the room, covered with the fragments of the dessert, and rendered helpless by the weight of the inverted table, placed thus by the eccentric gentleman, who had retreated as he had entered, by the window.

"And now, having told you all I think and feel," said Bosberry, after the necessary screaming and fainting had subsided, "I beg to remark that this is the work of your friend, Ma'am,—of your friend, ma'am," and he looked at Julia.

"Of m-y-y-y friend," sobbed out Miss Abbott. "Yes-your friend-Mr. Thomas Bl—.”

"Mr. Thomas Black," announced Bloomfield.

Why he's never dared to come back," cried Bosberry, as a very respectable elderly gentleman was ushered into the room. It was the same that the eccentric gentleman had "eased" of pocket-handkerchief and card-case in the morning.

"Uncle !" cried Julia.

"Brother!"-cried Mrs. Abbott-"Welcome, home from India!" Very true, Mr. Thomas Black, after a long sojourn in the East, had come down to Brighton to seek out his relatives, the Abbotts. His name announced in the 'Arrivals' had informed Mrs. Abbott of his whereabouts, and Julia had written accordingly. Bosberry was bothered.

"But Jackson-the shawl-"

"Was worn by me," said Miss Johnson, "Mr. Jackson is my-" "Affianced husband," exclaimed Mrs. Abbotts-" and if it had n't been for some people it had never been, now foully suspected and sought to be injured in name and fame."

Bosberry was more bothered-more so, when a police officer (introduced by Bloomfield) requested his attendance in the morning to give what evidence he could against "the eccentric gentleman," who was then at the Station House, labouring under something more than a suspicion of theft.

Bosberry fell on his knees..... like the modest painter of Greece, let us draw a curtain before the picture.

If you refer to the Supplement of the Times, September, 31, 1847, and look for "Marriages," you will read as follows:

"On the 29th, at St. Bilberry's, Brighton, Augustus Brown Bosberry, Esq. to Julia, only daughter of Mrs. Rackstraw Abbott of Trumper Terrace."

"On the same day, at the same place, John Jackson, Esq. to Julia, ninth daughter of Peter Johnson, Esq. of the Dyke, Brighton."

MADAME VIARDOT GARCIA.

A GLANCE AT THE ITALIAN OPERA,

WHAT manner of notice, biographical and personal, should be offered of a lady at this moment on the London stage, is a thing naturally enough to be decided by the nature of the lady-and of her portrait. At best, contemporary biography is a delicate business. We shall never cease to be amused by an ingenious solution of the dilemma put forth by a contemporary, when compelled to illustrate the very tasteful likeness of by. The Beauty painted had published books:but, well-a-day! they were not Books of Beauty: only weary novels, such as George Robins himself or the poets of Moses (of Aldgate) would have been puzzled to recommend in print. What, then, did the biographer? He recollected that Lady Eglantine had, "once upon a time," been worth a younger sister; from whose taste, accomplishments, and genius, every thing had been expected. True, Mistress Briar-Rose had died early, and "made no sign." So much the more interesting! And, to make a long story short, the memoir of Lady Eglantine amounted to neither more nor less than a panegyric of what Mistress Briar-Rose never became. This is one way of managing.

There is another way; which, though commoner, is, we apprehend, as little to be approved of by any person of taste or refinement,―a ransacking of private virtues, a turning-up of all "the mossy stones" (to use the Poet's figure) in the shady places of life, by way of advertising the number and sweetness of the violets which lie under them,

"Half hidden from the eye."

To see private worth, modesty, grace, gentlewomanly feeling, pawed in print, is at best a painful sight. The heroine of such praises is, by her very apotheosis, placed in a miserably false position. She has, thenceforth, to act up to a part: to make market of her simplicity; to see that her million confidantes and friends are not disappointed of one single blush, smile, or tear, which they have been invited to expect. They have been bidden to encore the beatings of her heart, and it must beat (as the bear of Goldsmith's showman danced) "to genteel tunes." This is said in no cynicism, but in a manly (which is a tender) respect for womanhood, and out of a deep and unchanging regard for the privacy of Genius, as well as for its public crowns, and honours, and triumphs. The raptures of the Boy Jones led to his being transported in a different fashion; and a like sentence should (with our good will) be passed on all who obtrude the heart-sorrows, the secret charities, the pretty tastes, or the capricious personal fancies of the living Artist, upon public notice; until at least they are brought before a court of law.

A word, too, as to the manner of lecturing upon the portrait. This is often done with such bare-faced disregard of the eyes, nose, and mouth, really existing, as the poor Actor must needs assume when the necessities of the scene compel him to apostrophize some matron

as a

"Young budding virgin, fair, and fresh, and sweet!"

or to deliver, with hands ecstatically clasped, a rhapsody in praise of the dazzling beauty of a heroine, who, when she appears in propria

persona, proves to be simply a dazzling ugliness! One might think that panegyrics like these could only be endured by idiots, did one not encounter the folly so often as to presume that it must have some success and virtue,-a certain cosmetic influence, so to say, charming the world into fancying uncouth features regular, and metamorphosing cheeks of clay or chalk, into lilies and roses. The world is ruled,— the play-going world especially,-by what Mr. Carlyle calls "sham ;” nevertheless, while on the subject of beauty and plays, let us digress to an instance or two, the import and "moral" of which are totally different.

Madame Pisaroni, that grandest of contralto singers (if we are to trust gossip Fame, and acquit her of flattering the past at the expense of the present), is said never to have accepted a threatrical engage ment in a place where she was unknown, without previously sending her portrait by way of warning-with the honest admission that it was a likeness rather favourable than otherwise. The hardihood of the experiment is of itself a warrant for the genius of her who risked it. She knew that she could surprise the public, were it not already too preoccupied by another surprise, to have no leisure and attention for considering her real claims on its admiration. But Pisaroni's was a case of abundant, redundant, fearful ugliness. Her voice, too, was in some of its notes harsh, strange, and produced with pain. Yet tradition has decided that on the stage she was even more impressive than Pasta's self.

Madame Pisaroni's, however, was an extreme case. Let us take another, that of Mademoiselle Rachel, whose irregularity of features have not even sublimity to recommend them; meagre, mournful, mean looking, with eyes having no speculation in them, the same being small and inexpressive. Who can recollect all or any one of these defects when he crouches before the tremendous curse of her Camilla, or shrinks from the scorching passion of a Roxana?

Or who, to close our prelude with an instance no less eminent,that has seen and heard Ronconi in "Maria de Rohan," or "I due Foscari," ever adverted to the utter want of distinction in his face or figure? to his small, grating, tuneless voice? There are those who conquer and triumph because Nature has so willed it; there are, again, those who take success by force, in spite of Nature. The latter are, assuredly, the greatest.

Thus much by way of prelude. Now, a prelude, as every musician knows, should bear some relation to the piece which is to follow, and yet not be a strict or mechanical prophecy. The description of Artist that we are about to characterize in Madame Viardot Garcia, is indicated in the foregoing paragraphs, though the illustrations they contain are extreme-not literal. Her fame is not lost in the renown of her deceased sister. Her presence is not repulsive, like Pisaroni's. But she is an artist of a gifted family: an artist in right of individual genius, and in defiance of certain incompletenesses and drawbacks; and it would be ridiculous, were it possible, for the writer to approach her with those common-place flatteries, in which there is as much degradation as falsity.

The Garcias will henceforth make as special a figure in the chronicles of singing, as the Bachs in the story of German instrumental music, or the Kembles in the annals of our English stage. And not the less in

teresting is this, from their being the solitary contribution made to Art by Spain, that rich yet ravaged land, which of late years has shewn such sparing signs of imaginative life. Emanuel Garcia, the father, was one of those fervid (one might say, without caricature, furious) geniuses, who form for themselves a school, a career, a success: and who are ready to break in pieces all under their control who cannot do as much. A Sevillian by birth, and only (his biographers tell us) instructed in church music-there being no theatre then in Seville-he made himself a stage-composer and an opera-singer, Heaven knows how! but, as regards the latter character, without a paragon. After having raised his reputation as high in his own country as a singer's reputation could be there raised, he chose to make his way over the Pyrenees, came to Paris, and, to quote M. Fétis, "though he had never sung in Italian, though he had never, indeed, thoroughly learned to sing, appeared on the 11th of February, 1808, in the 'Griselda' of Paër with a success which excused his rashness." It will be rated as no light testimony to his excellence, by all familiar with the unreal and conceited pretensions of Parisian connoisseurship, that he could wring from the coxcombical Garat, the tenor singer, and idol of France, this recorded praise, "J'aime la fureur Andalouse de cet homme: elle anime tout." Then Garcia composed operas with a wondrous facility, though his compositions, like those of other singers, (Mr. Balfe's music making, perhaps, the exception, which proves the rule,) are worth little. A story is told of his improvising his own part on the first night of some other maestro's new opera, which he had not taken the pains to get by heart; but whose chords and modulations-in all probability common-place enough -he had learned at rehearsal. The feat, however, is not more wondrous than those performed as habitual concert-exhibitions by the boy Mozart, or than the noble and regular fugues which a Mendelssohn or a Schneider can make when he sits down to think on the organ. There is something pleasantly fitting in the idea that Garcia should have been the original Almaviva in Rossini's "Barbiere." Moreover, he was the "Otello ;" and, as that is the most magnificent part in the tenor-singer's repertory, his supremacy assigns him something like the highest place among the highest. How, when his own vocal powers failed him, he betook to cultivating those of his daughter; how he undertook the hazardous speculation of trying to establish an Italian Opera in America, to the last hour of his life an angry, indomitable sort of man are matters told-lamely enough it must be confessed-in Madame Merlin's remembrances of herself and Malibran.

We have principally alluded to Garcia to explain the peculiarities of his school of singing, by the "fureur Andalouse" of the man, and the strange nomadic sort of way in which he had picked up his education. The phrase of "cultivation," when applied to Garcia's manner of breaking in the voice of his daughter Maria, has always reminded us of some of those colonial experiments where the settler ploughs the soil armed to the teeth, and sows his seed with an ammunition-bag at his side. Whereas the older singing masters gently aided and enriched Nature, drawing forth the powers which existed to the fullest perfection. Garcia's plan seems to have been to assume that will can do everything; and, in serious earnest, to propose to the student what the mamma of John Parry's Accomplished Young Lady is made to do when the damsel complains that her voice is tired," Well, then, sing it an octave

Fétis. Biographie des Musiciens.

higher!" Such notes as the pupil's organ did not originally possess were to be manufactured by main force; the singer wanting B or C in alt was to get them:-and did. Those, by the way, who have never troubled themselves with the mysteries of music, have small idea how many of the voices heard of late years have been concocted on a similar plan. To go no further, we may mention those of Pasta, Miss Kemble, Lind, Duprez. Long ago, some artifice must have been used, as Dr. Burney records, to get up the altissimo notes such as La Bastardella, or Madame Lebrun, or Madame Lange exhibited, now fallen into disuse. But the flageolet tones thus produced were only called out in warbling passages of execution; whereas modern opera ordains that the hard work of the passion should be done on the extreme notes thus reclaimed. Hence a total difference in the training process, and hence a consequence to which the old unimpassioned singers seem not to have been liable-the rapid deterioration of the natural voice, and the early wearing-out of the organ thus factitiously constructed. Among all the ladies mentioned, the octave from F to F, which is the natural basis of every soprano voice, has been weak, or toneless, or uncertain. The art which Malibran employed to conceal this, by passing in her ornamental passages from her highest to her lowest notes, aided by the resources of her powerful fancy, enabled her to win a characteristic out of an inherent defect. More or less, some such expedient must be resorted to by every vocalist thus trained: hence a certain family likeness in all the songstresses of the Garcia school who have survived the course of study. Where the frame has been physically feeble, many a voice has entered into the Spanish academy, to come out no more.

Madame Viardot, to whom we come at last, possesses another family peculiarity which we do not remember to have seen dwelt upon in print. Her voice is Spanish, having that touch of bitter orange (some will understand the phantasy) analogous to that characteristic beauty, partly sullen, partly piquant, which distinguishes the women of Murillo from those of Titian:-a rich, guttural tone, entirely distinct from the timbre of Italy or those of Germany, France, or England. This we have never failed to recognise in all the Peninsular singers we have heard. It was to be detected in that unformed lady Madame del Carmen Montenegro, who shrieked her three nights on the opera stage last season (1847); it is audible in prettiest perfection in the young Mademoiselle de Mendi-Madame Viardot's cousin. It gives a not unwelcome peculiarity to the utterances of the very confident lady, who announces herself from time to time as "the renowned Madame de Lozano." As a means of effect, it may be made almost analogous to the discord which so deliciously by contrast enhances harmony; but it is originally one difficulty the more. And the natural charm of an even, flowing, luscious Italian voice-such as those of Grisi, Tadolini, Alboni, Mario will always carry a large portion of public suffrage.

There is something, however, beyond, independent of, and above all these gifts, of which Pauline Garcia early proved herself possessed in the largest measure, to wit, genius. Born in 1821, we are told, that when she was four years of age she spoke as many languages; that three years later she had mastered the piano-forte sufficiently to be employed by her father (no gentle task-master) as the accompanist of his singingclasses, that she shewed so much technical and musical aptitude, as to be destined for the career of an instrumentalist; being for that purpose placed under the tutelage of Liszt. There was, however, within