(of francs) to his own village in the sunny
south, among the olives, and vines, and staring
white houses. He will make his uncle the
abbate (who lives still) as rich as an English
bishop, and build a mausoleum over the
grave of the cross old housekeeper, and lead
a jovial, simple-minded happy life among his
old kindred and friends: now exhibiting the
diamond cross that the Czar of Russia gave
him, and now the golden snuff-box presented
to him by the Kaiser of Austria. Do not let
us be too hard upon the "confounded
foreigners" who come here to sell their
crotchets and quavers for as much gold as
they will fetch. Only consider how many
million pounds sterling a year we make by
spinning shirts and welding iron for the
confounded foreigners; how many millions of
golden pennies our travelling countrymen
turn by cutting canals, and making railroads,
steamers, suspension bridges, in lands where
we ourselves are but "confounded foreigners."

If I have dwelt somewhat too lengthily and
discursively upon the male illustrations of the
musical world, I beg that you will not suppose
that the fairer denizens of that harmonious
sphere neglect to visit Messrs. Octave and
Piccolo's shop. Prime Donne abound, even
more than Primj Uomini. Every season
produces a score of ladies, Signoras, Madames,
Mademoiselles, and Fraus, who are to do
great things: who come out and go in with
great rapidity. Yonder is Madame Digitalis.
She sings superbly: but she is fifty, and fat,
and ugly. "Bah! yawn the habitués. The
Digitalis is passed. She is rococo. Give us
something new." Whereupon starts up
Mademoiselle Crimea Okolska from Tartary (said
to be a run-away serf of the Czar, and to have
been thrice knouted for refusing to sing duets
with the Grand Duke Constantine) the new
soprano. But Mademoiselle Crimea (she with
the purple velvet mantle and primrose
bonnet bantering Polpetti in the corner),
screams, and sings sharp, and pronounces
Italian execrably; and the habitués declare
that she won't do, and that she is nothing
after all but the same Miss Crimmins of the
Royal Academy, who failed in Adalgisa six
years ago, and has been abroad to improve
and denationalise her name. The rage among
the ladies who can sing for being Prime
Donne, is greater than that among attorneys'
clerks for playing Hamlet. Octave and
Piccolo are besieged at the commencement of
every season by cohorts of foreign ladies, all
with the highest recommendations, all of
whom have been mentioned in the most
enthusiastic terms by M. Berlioz, M. Fétis, and
the other great musical oracles of the continent,
and all of whom desire ardently to sing
at the Philharmonic or before her Majesty.
The manager of the opera plays off half a dozen
spurious Prime Donne during the months of
March and April, keeping the trumps for the
height of the season. And not only to the
continent is this prlma donna rage confined.
Staid and decorous English parents hearing
their daughter sing Wapping old Stairs,
prettily, send her forthwith to the Royal
Academy of Music. She comes back and sings
florid Italian scenas. Send her to Italy, cry
with one voice her relations and friends. To
Italy she goes, and from Italy she returns, and
comes out at the opera or at one of the fashionable
morning concerts. She sings something
with a great deal of ornament, but in a very
small voice: you may hear the rustling of the
music paper, as she turns the leaves, with far
more distinctness than her song. She goes
in again, after this coming out, and is heard of
next year at the Snagglesgrade Mechanics'
Institution; and soon afterwards she sensibly
marries Mr. Solder the ironmonger, and gives
up singing altogether.

Prima donna upon prima donna — never
ending, still beginning, none of them can oust
from their thrones the four or five blue ribbons
of melody, who go on from year to year, still
electrifying, still enchanting, still amazing us:
none of them can touch the Queen: the
Semiramis of Song: whose voice no more declines
than her beauty, whose beauty than her
grace, whose grace than her deep pathos,
and soulful declamation and glorious delivery.
Ah, lovers of music, your aviaries may be full
of nightingales and swans, English and
foreign, black, white, and pied; but, believe
me, the woods will be voiceless for long, long
after the Queen of Song shall have
abdicated her throne and loosened the silver cords
of her harp of glory.

For all, however, little Miss Larke, the fair-
haired English prima donna, holds her own
manfully. Her name is Larke, and she sings
like one; and her voice is as pure as her
fame. This brave little woman has run the
gauntlet through all the brakes and thickets,
and jungles, and deserts, where "devouring
tygers lie," of the musical world. Lowliness
was her young ambition's ladder, and now
that she has attained the topmost round, she
does not turn her back on the ladder,

                         Scorning the base degrees
     By which she did ascend. So Cæsar did —

But so does not Miss Larke. She is honorably
proud of the position she has gained by her
own merits and good conduct; but she sings
with as much equanimity before royalty, as
she was wont to do at the Snagglesgrade
Institution, and has ever a helping hand for
those beneath her who are struggling and
weak. There is my darling little Larke by the
grand pianoforte, blooming in pink muslin, with
a neat morocco music case in her hand. Mr.
Piccolo has a whole list of engagements,
metropolitan and provincial, for her; from
aristocratic soirées to morning concerts; and
she has a list at home of engagements she has
herself received, which she must consult
before she can accept more. Go on and prosper,
little Larke. May your sweet voice last a
thousand years!

But the crowd thins in Messrs. Octave and