had opportunities of studying the engraved scores of some of Lulli’s operas, which, considering the close intercourse between the courts of France and England, may have found their way across the Channel.  ‘Dido and AEneas’ is now universally spoken of as the first English opera.  Masques had been popular from the time of Queen Elizabeth onwards, which the greatest living poets and musicians had not disdained to produce, and Sir William Davenant had given performances of musical dramas ‘after the manner of the Ancients’ during the closing years of the Commonwealth, but it is probable that spoken dialogue occurred in all these entertainments, as it certainly did in Locke’s ‘Psyche,’ Banister’s ‘Circe,’ in fact, in all the dramatic works of this period which were wrongly described as operas.  In ‘Dido and AEneas,’ on the contrary, the music is continuous throughout.  Airs and recitatives, choruses and instrumental pieces succeed each other, as in the operas of the Italian and French schools.  ’Dido and AEneas’ was written for performance at a young ladies’ school kept by one Josias Priest in Leicester Fields and afterwards at Chelsea.  The libretto was the work of Nahum Tate, the Poet Laureate of the time.  The opera is in three short acts, and Virgil’s version of the story is followed pretty closely save for the intrusion of a sorceress and a chorus of witches who have sworn Dido’s destruction and send a messenger to AEneas, disguised as Mercury, to hasten his departure.  Dido’s death song, which is followed by a chorus of mourning Cupids, is one of the most pathetic scenes ever written, and illustrates in a forcible manner Purcell’s beautiful and ingenious use of a ground-bass.  The gloomy chromatic passage constantly repeated by the bass instruments, with ever-varying harmonies in the violins, paints such a picture of the blank despair of a broken heart as Wagner himself, with his immense orchestral resources, never surpassed.  In the general construction of his opera Purcell followed the French model, but his treatment of recitative is bolder and more various than that of Lulli, while as a melodist he is incomparably superior.  Purcell never repeated the experiment of ‘Dido and AEneas.’  Musical taste in England was presumably not cultivated enough to appreciate a work of so advanced a style.  At any rate, for the rest of his life, Purcell wrote nothing for the theatre but incidental music.  Much of this, notably the scores of ’Timon of Athens,’ ‘Bonduca,’ and ‘King Arthur,’ is wonderfully beautiful, but in all of these works the spoken dialogue forms the basis of the piece, and the music is merely an adjunct, often with little reference to the main interest of the play.  In ‘King Arthur’ occurs the famous ’Frost Scene,’ the close resemblance of which to the ’Choeur de Peuples des Climats Glaces’ in Lulli’s ‘Isis’ would alone make it certain that Purcell was a careful student of the French school of opera.