streets, chilly houses, dull shops, dingy-looking Jews, dripping umbrellas, luxurious hotels, and exorbitant charges,—and this is all I can recollect of Frankfort.

ALDA.

Indeed! I pity you. To me it was associated only with pleasant feelings, and, in truth, it is a pleasant place. Life, there, appears in a very attractive costume: not in a half-holiday, half beggarly garb, as at Rome and Naples; nor in a thin undress of superficial decency as at Berlin; nor in a court domino, hiding we know not what-as at Vienna and Munich; nor half motley, half military, as at Paris; nor in rags and embroidery, as in London; but at Frankfort all the outside at least is fair, substantial, and consistent. The shops vie in splendour with those of London and Paris; the principal streets are clean, the houses spacious and airy, and there is a general appearance of cheerfulness and tranquillity, mingled with the luxury of wealth and the bustle of business, which, after the misery, and murmuring, and bitterness of faction, we had left in London, was really a relief to the spirits. It is true, that during my last two visits, this apparent tranquillity concealed a good deal of political ferment. The prisons were filled with those unfor

tunate wretches who had endeavoured to excite a popular tumult against the Prussian and Austrian governments. The trials were going forward every day, but not a syllable of the result transpired beyond the walls of the Römer Saal. Although the most reasonable and liberal of the citizens agreed in condemning the rashness and folly of these young men, the tide of feeling was evidently in their favour: for instance, it was not the fashion to invite the Prussian officers, and I well remember that when Goethe's Egmont was announced at the theatre, it was forbidden by the magistracy, from a fear that certain scenes and passages in that play might call forth some open and decided expression of the public feeling; in fact, only a few evenings before, some passages in the Massaniello had been applied and applauded by the audience, in a manner so ill-bred, that the wife of one of the ministers of the conference is said to have left her seat in the middle of the representation. The theatre is rather commodious than splendid; the established company, both for the opera and the regular drama, excellent, and often varied by temporary visits of great actors and singers from the other theatres of Germany. On my first visit to Frankfort, which was during the fair of 1829, Paganini, then in the zenith of

his glory, was giving a series of concerts; but do not ask me any thing about him, for it is a wornout subject, and you know I am not one of the enthusiastic, or even the orthodox, with regard to his merits.

MEDON.

You do not mean you will not tell me that with all your love of music, you were insensible to the miraculous powers of that man?

ALDA.

I suppose they were miraculous, as I heard every one say so round me; but I listened to him as to any other musician, for the sake of the pleasure to be derived from music, not for the sake of wondering at difficulties overcome, and impossibilities made possible—they might have remained impossibilities for me. But insensible I was not to the wondrous charm of his tone and expression. I was thrilled, melted, excited, at the moment, but it left no relish on the palate, if I may use the expression. To throw me into such convulsions of enthusiasm, as I saw this man excite here and on the continent, I must have the orchestra with all its various mingling world of sound, or the divine human voice breathing music and passion

together; but this is a matter of feeling, habit, education, like all other tastes in art.

I think it was during our third visit to Frankfort that Madame Haitsinger-Neumann was playing the gast-rolles, for so they courteously denominate the parts filled by occasional visitors, to whom, as guests, the precedence is always given. · Madame Haitsinger is the wife of Haitsinger, the tenor singer, who was in London, and sung in the Fidelio, with Madame Devrient-Schroeder. She is one of the most celebrated actresses in Germany for light comedy, if any comedy in Germany can be called light, in comparison with the same style of acting in France or England. Her figure is rather large

MEDON.

Like most of the German actresses-for I never yet saw one who had attained to celebrity, who was not much too embonpoint for our ideas of a youthful or sentimental heroine—

ALDA.

Not Devrient-Schroeder?

MEDON.

Devrient is all impassioned grace; but I think

that in time even she will be in danger of becoming a little-how shall I express it with sufficient delicacy? a little too substantial.

ALDA.

No, not if a soul of music and fire, informing a feverish, excitable temperament, which is to the mantling spirit within, what the high-pitched in- . strument is to the breeze which sweeps over its chords, not if these can avert the catastrophe ; but what if you had seen Mademoiselle Lindner, with a figure like Mrs. Liston's enacting Fenella and Clärchen?

MEDON.

I should have said, that only a German imagination could stand it! It is one of Madame de Staël's clever aphorisms, that on the stage, "Il faut menager les caprices des yeux avec le plus grand scrupule, car ils peuvent detruire, sans appel tout effet sérieux;" but the Germans do not appear to be subject to these caprices des yeux; and have not these fastidious scruples about corporeal grace; for them sentiment, however clumsy, is still sentiment. Perhaps they are in the right.