used to tell the story, "that I ever received in my life." He submitted to the correction, however, with so good a grace, that he gained the good opinion of Jomelli, who afterwards rendered him many important services. After gaining a splendid reputation on the continent, Giardini came to England in 1750. His performances were heard with astonishment and delight; and after having been employed at all the concerts in the metropolis, he was placed at the head of the Opera orchestra. This led to his taking a share in the management of that enormous and, too often, ruinous establishment,' along with the celebrated female singer Mingotti; and the consequence was, that they were both very speedily brought to the verge of ruin; and were glad, at the end of the first season, to get rid of the concern as they best could. Notwithstanding this lesson, they were foolish enough to embark again in the Opera management a few years afterwards; and again, after one calamitous season, were obliged to give it up. His female associate, who by this time had declined in public favour, left England; and he, after seeing all his property swallowed up in the Opera House, except the privilege of an annual benefit, was under the necessity of returning to his proper employment of composition, leading and performing at concerts, and teaching singing in families of rank. The account given by Dr. Burney of the musical feuds in which Mingotti and Giardini were engaged with rival performers, and the interest taken in them by the fashionable world, presents a curious feature in the manners of high life in those days. When Giardini arrived in London, he gained many friends among the nobility and gentry; among the warmest of whom was Mrs. Fox Lane, afterwards Lady Bingley, a supreme leader of the ton at that period. When Mingotti afterwards arrived, and joined with Giardini in the management of the Opera, Mrs. Fox Lane espoused her cause with great zeal, and entered into her quarrels with all the vehemence of a partisan. It is told of this lady, that, having desired the Hon. General Crewe to give her his decided opinion as to the merits of a dispute between Mingotti and another syren, whose rivalry then shook the fashionable world, the General, after listening with much gravity to a long list of grievances of which her favourite complained, said, “And pray, Madam, who is Signora Mingotti?""Get out of my house!" exclaimed the lady in a rage; "you shall never hear her sing another note at my concerts as long as you live!" Mrs. Fox Lane, with two such performers as Mingotti and Giardini, used to give concerts to her choice friends, which were subjects of envy and obloquy to all who were unable to obtain admission to them. At these concerts, besides these two professors, several of the most distinguished fashionables used to perform: " and the difficulty," says Burney, “or rather the impossibility of hearing these professors and illustrious dilettanti any where else, stimulated curiosity so much, that there was no sacrifice or mortification to which fashionable people would not submit, in order to obtain admission. And la padrona della casa lost few opportunities of letting them know the value she set on her invitations, by using them like dogs when they were there. Whenever a benefit was in contemplation for one of her protégés, taking 1 There is surely, however, no necessary connexion between the Opera House and ruin. It has been almost always ruinous, because it has, for the last hundred years, been managed by parties whose very description implies mismanagementby associations of nobility and people of ton-by speculators ignorant of music and every thing belonging to it, or by foreign singers, actors, or adventurers. This, with hardly an exception, has been its history. The management of Mr. Ayrton, an accomplished musician and a man of business, was a brief period of splendid success. A new management is about to commence under the happiest auspices. Mr. Monk Mason, and his aide-de-camp Mr. Wade, are men from whose knowledge, activity, and liberality, every thing may be expected. Report speaks highly of their preliminary exertions. care of the honour of her guests, she obliged them to behave with due gratitude and munificence on the occasion.. Come,' would she often say to her friends, give me five guineas!' a demand as implicitly obeyed as if made on the road. Nor had any one, who ever wished to be admitted into such good company again, the courage to ask the occasion of the demand; but patiently waited the lady's pleasure to them whether they should be honoured with a ticket for Giardini's or Mingotti's benefit." Giardini continued to enjoy the favour of the English public till 1784, when he went to Italy. When he returned to London, after an absence of five years, he was no longer received as formerly. His health was impaired, and his powers diminished; and the public attention was now occupied with newer favourites. After an unsuccessful attempt to carry on a burletta, or comic opera, in the Haymarket Theatre, he carried his company of performers to Russia in 1793. But he was as unsuccessful there as in England; and, after struggling for some years with his difficulties, he died at Petersburg in 1796, at the age of eighty, in great poverty. The advantages which he gained by his talents, he lost, during his whole life, by his disposition. By his extravagance he squandered the large sums he received, and alienated his best friends by his capricious and splenetic temper. As a composer, Giardini had small pretensions to learning. When somebody told Dr. Boyce that he professed to teach composition in twenty lessons, the Doctor sarcastically remarked-"All that he knows of composition he might teach in ten." His compositions, however, were pleasing and effective, and long very popular. He did not confine himself to instrumental composition, but wrote two or three operas which had considerable success, and a number of songs, some of which were in request in private musical parties within our recollection. BLONDEL DE NESLE. ' THE Danube's wide-flowing waters lave And the voice of its hoarse and sullen wave And the night-breeze sighs in a deeper gust, A yoke is hung over the victor's neck, And fetters enthral the strong, And manhood's pride, like a fearful wreck, "Blondel de Nesle, the favourite minstrel of Richard Cœur de Lion, and an attendant upon his person, devoted himself to discover the place of his confinement during the crusade against Saladin, emperor of the Saracens. He wandered in vain from castle to palace, till he learned that a strong and almost inaccessible fortress upon the Danube was watched with peculiar strictness, as containing some state-prisoner of distinction. The minstrel took his harp, and approaching as near the castle as he durst, came so nigh the walls as to hear the melancholy captive soothing his imprisonment with music. Blondel touched his harp; the prisoner heard and was silent: upon this the minstrel played the first part of a tune, or lay, known to the captive; who instantly played the second part; and thus, the faithful servant obtained the certainty that the inmate of the castle was no other than his royal master."-Tales of a Grandfather, p. 69. And the gleams of hope, overshadow'd, seem But the heart-the heart is unconquer'd still- Quenchless the spirit, though fetter'd the will, His soul, like an arrow from rocky ground, But the hour of darkness girds him now Anguish sits throned on his moody brow, From the dazzling splendour of glories past To list to the sound of the wailing blast, As the wan lamp dimly burns; For the daring might of the lion-hearted With Freedom's soul-thrilling notes hath parted! SCIENTIFIC LETTERS TO A LADY OF QUALITY. LETTER III. IN following up the scale of degradation, we find that the organ of voice ceases after the class of reptiles. Fishes hear and smell acutely, but they have no distinct vocal organs. After the mammalia, animals, such as birds, &c. deposit eggs, and hatch them if they are fruitful, and do not suckle their young; and this with birds is the commencement of a new mode of generation. Beyond the vertebrated department we cannot trace any distinct system of vessels for absorption, such as is seen among the vertebralia. When we arrive at the class called molluscæ, such as snails and such soft fleshy animals as have no internal skeleton, the organization has become very much deteriorated. There are no distinct compartments for the brain and spinal chord and bowels, all of which occupy the common cavity of the body. The nervous system consists of a mere knotted chord; there is no heart, and the organs of sense become obliterated by degrees, and there is no organ for the function of respiration. In the last department the organs of circulation disappear altogether, and the whole nutritive apparatus consists exclusively of a mere bag with a single aperture, such as in the fluke or the hydatid. We now gradually arrive at the little infusory beings seen through a microscope in drops of water; and here, with few exceptions, all special organs disappear entirely. In this manner the scale of organization becomes gradually simplified and degraded throughout the four departments to which all the different classes are severally referable; namely, the vertebralia, the mollusca, the articulate, and the radiatæ. In the first department we pass from man to the eel and snake, forming the extremes of this department. In the second we commence with the cuttle-fish, and finish with the oyster. In the third, we have a series from the crab and the lobster to the leech and earthworm. And the fourth department extends from the medusa or starfish to the infusory animalcules. At what period of the history of our earth this varied and extensive system of organization commenced, we have no natural evidence to show; but the lights of geology inform us that the globe we inhabit was not always susceptible of life. The primitive rocks bear no signs of organic bodies, and the first indications of organization are limited to coarse and simple plants, such as ferns and fungi, and common shells. Many ages appear to have elapsed before the production of the higher animals; and man must have been much more recent still, for his is the only species that has never been discovered in a fossil state; neither is any example of him or of his works found among the deep and solid crystallizations of the earth. This short and imperfect sketch is sufficient probably to afford an idea of the intense interest attached to the pursuit of zoology combined with anatomy and physiology. The history of living beings is illustrated by the two last sciences; and the resemblance between man and animals naturally induces a feeling in favour of their possessing, in common, certain physical and moral attributes, which ought to attach us to the brute creation with some degree of fellow-feeling. Moreover, the various and extensive uses which man makes of animals to administer to his necessities, luxuries, and gratifications, renders zoology, if not the most interesting study we can pursue, a study which is in every point of view calculated to improve the human mind, to elevate its notions of the Deity, and to exalt the dignity of man's nature, exclusively of all fortuitous and meretricious acquirements. În order to profit by these pursuits it is evidently necessary to be fortified in some measure by a knowledge of the physical sciences: pure organization, although it becomes associated with life, is not entirely removed from the influence of physical laws. Organization, in its living state, has hitherto been the object of our contemplation, and now something may be said respecting the phenomena of decomposition, which occur when organized structures cease to perform their vital functions. In the first place, spontaneous decomposition is either retarded or accelerated by various causes, which influence the changes occurring when life is extinct. These are not only curious in a philosophical point of view, but very useful in their application to domestic economy, when we consider the multitude of vegetable and animal substances which minister to our sensual appetites and are necessary to our nourishment, since we cannot, like the fabled chameleon, live upon air, without adding to our solids and fluids from the sources of organization around us. The most general change in organized matter, which tends to retard decomposition, is that produced by fermentation. Thus the spirituous, vinous, and acetous fermentations, such as afford alcohol, wine, and vinegar, resist putrefaction the longest of any substances: so that provisions steeped in these are not easily influenced by warmth, moisture, and atmospheric air-the three great promoters of putrefaction. The mere exclusion of either of these causes alone prevents for a long time that spontaneous change which characterizes putrefaction or decomposition. The predominance of nitrogen marks the putrefactive change, which is thus first indicated by a sensible fetor and the extrication of ammoniacal gas. By surrounding animal substances with a temperature below freezing point, this phenomenon is prevented accordingly, provisions encased in ice are remarkably long preserved from putrefaction. In the northernmost wilds of Siberia, among perpetual frozen masses of snow, a mammoth was discovered, an animal unknown as existing since the flood: a great quantity of flesh, and skin covered with hair, remained upon its bones, and in such preservation that dogs could feed upon it. Meat suspended in a dry current of air may be preserved some time, though less long than in ice. At first the meat becomes firm, and then it is covered with a brown crust, and goes through no further change for some time. The practice of hermetically sealing potted meat, previously a little boiled, preserves it from the influence of the air still longer; but its flavour is more injured than either when preserved by ice or in a dry current of air. Nevertheless, meat so prepared affords better nourishment than highly dried provisions sub |