must win!” “No, she can’t!” “Grey for ever!” “Chesnut for a hundred!” “Done! done!”—­Magnificent!—­neck and neck!—­splendid!—­any body’s race!  Bravo grey!—­bravo chesnut!—­bravo both!  Ten yards will settle it.  The chesnut rider throws up his arms—­a slight dash of blood soils the “Day and Martin”—­an earth-disdaining bound lands chesnut a winner of three thousand guineas! and all the world are in raptures with the judgment displayed in the last kick of the little man’s TOP BOOTS.

FUSBOS.

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HINTS ON MELO-DRAMATIC MUSIC.

It has often struck us forcibly that the science of melo-dramatic music has been hitherto very imperfectly understood amongst us.  The art of making “the sound an echo of the sense”—­of expressing, by orchestral effects, the business of the drama, and of forming a chromatic commentary to the emotions of the soul and the motions of the body, has been shamefully neglected on the English stage.  Ignorant composers and ignoble fiddlers have attempted to develop the dark mysteries and intricate horrors of the melo-drama; but unable to cope with the grandeur of their subject, they have been betrayed into the grossest absurdities.  What, for instance, could be more preposterous than to assign the same music for “storming a fort,” and “stabbing a virtuous father!” Equally ridiculous would it be to express “the breaking of the sun through a fog,” and “a breach of promise of marriage;” or the “rising of a ghost,” and the “entrance of a lady’s maid,” in the same keys.

The adaptation of the different instruments in the orchestra to the circumstance of the drama, is also a matter of extreme importance.  How often has the effect of a highly-interesting suicide been destroyed by an injudicious use of the trombone; and a scene of domestic distress been rendered ludicrous by the intervention of the double-drum!

If our musical composers would attend more closely than they have been in the habit of doing, to the minutiae of the scene which is intrusted to them to illustrate, and study the delicate lights and shades of human nature, as we behold it nightly on the Surrey stage, we might confidently hope, at no very distant period, to see melo-drama take the lofty position it deserves in the histrionic literature of this country.  We feel that there is a wide field here laid open for the exercise of British talent, and have therefore, made a few desultory mems. on the subject, which we subjoin; intended as modest hints for the guidance of composers of melodramatic music.  The situations we have selected from the most popular Melos. of the day; the music to be employed in each instance, we have endeavoured to describe in such a manner as to render it intelligible to all our readers.

Music for the entrance of a brigand in the dark, should be slow and mysterious, with an effective double bass in it.