defend himself to the last drop of blood.  Fortunately matters do not come to a climax.  A body of the Prince’s attendants arrive in time to prevent any bloodshed, and the opera ends with the discomfiture of the villains and the happy settlement of Gabriela’s love affairs.  Kreutzer’s music is for the most part slight, and occasionally borders upon the trivial, but several scenes are treated in the true romantic spirit, and some of the concerted pieces are admirably written.  Lortzing (1803-1852) was a more gifted musician than Kreutzer, and several of his operas are still exceedingly popular in Germany.  The scene of ‘Czar und Zimmermann,’ which is fairly well known in England as ‘Peter the Shipwright,’ is laid at Saardam, where Peter the Great is working in a shipyard under the name of Michaelhoff.  There is another Russian employed in the same yard, a deserter named Peter Ivanhoff, and the very slight incidents upon which the action of the opera hinges arise from the mistakes of a blundering burgomaster who confuses the identity of the two men.  The music is exceedingly bright and tuneful, and much of it is capitally written.  Scarcely less popular in Germany than ‘Czar und Zimmermann’ is ‘Der Wildschuetz’ (The Poacher), a bustling comedy of intrigue and disguise, which owes its name to the mistake of a foolish old village schoolmaster, who fancies that he has shot a stag in the baronial preserves.  The chief incidents in the piece arise from the humours of a vivacious baroness, who disguises herself as a servant in order to make the acquaintance of her fiance, unknown to him.  The music of ’Der Wildschuetz’ is no less bright and unpretentious than that of ’Czar und Zimmermann’; in fact, these two works may be taken as good specimens of Lortzing’s engaging talent.  His strongest points are a clever knack of treating the voices contrapuntally in concerted pieces, and a humorous trick of orchestration, two features with which English audiences have become pleasantly familiar in Sir Arthur Sullivan’s operettas, which works indeed owe not a little to the influence of Lortzing and Kreutzer.

Inferior even to the slightest of the minor composers of the romantic school was Flotow, whose ‘Martha’ nevertheless has survived to our time, while hundreds of works far superior in every way have perished irretrievably.  Flotow (1812-1883) was a German by birth, but his music is merely a feeble imitation of the popular Italianisms of the day.  ‘Martha’ tells the story of a freakish English lady who, with her maid, disguises herself as a servant and goes to the hiring fair at Richmond.  There they fall in with an honest farmer of the neighbourhood named Plunket, and his friend Lionel, who promptly engage them.  The two couples soon fall in love with each other, but various hindrances arise which serve to prolong the story into four weary acts.  Flotow had a certain gift of melody, and the music of ‘Martha’ has the merit of a rather trivial tunefulness, but the score is absolutely