into ecstasies, and was tumultuously encored in the pseudo-Scotch ballad of “Blue Bonnets over the Border,” he was extremely disgusted, and exclaimed two or three times, “Ah, that is beast!” (Ah, cela est bete!) to our infinite diversion.  Much more aggravating proof was poor Weber destined to have of the famous tenor’s love of mere popularity in his art, and strange enough, no doubt, to the great German composer was the thirst for ignorant applause which induced Braham to reject the beautiful, tender, and majestic opening air Weber had written for him in the character of Huon, and insist upon the writing of a battle-piece which might split the ears of the groundlings and the gods, and furnish him an opportunity for making some of the startling effects of lyrical declamation which never failed to carry his audience by storm.

No singer ever delivered with greater purity or nobler breadth Handel’s majestic music; the masterly simplicity of his execution of all really fine compositions was worthy of his first-rate powers; but the desire of obtaining by easier and less elevated means the acclamations of his admirers seemed irresistible to him, and “Scots wha hae,” with the flourish of his stick in the last verse, was a sure triumph which he never disdained.  Weber expressed unbounded astonishment and contempt at this unartistic view of things, and with great reluctance at length consented to suppress, or rather transfer to the overture, the noble and pathetic melody designed for Huon’s opening song, for which he submitted the fine warlike cantata beginning—­

    “Oh,’tis a glorious sight to see
     The charge of the Christian chivalry!”

in which, to be sure, Braham charged with the Christians, and routed the Paynims, and mourned for the wounded, and wept for the dead, and returned in triumph to France in the joyous cabaletta, with wonderful dramatic effect, such as, no doubt, the other song would never have enabled him to produce.  But the success of the song did not reconcile Weber to what he considered the vulgarity and inappropriateness of its subject, and the circumstance lowered his opinion both of the English singer and of the English public very grievously.

How well I remember all the discussions of those prolonged, repeated, anxious, careful rehearsals, and the comical despair of which Miss Paton, the heroine of the opera, was the occasion to all concerned, by the curious absence of dramatic congruity of gesture and action which she contrived to combine with the most brilliant and expressive rendering of the music.  In the great shipwreck scene, which she sang magnificently, she caught up the short end of a sash tied around her waist, and twirled it about without unfastening it, by way of signaling from the top of a rock for help from a distant vessel, the words she sang being, “Quick, quick, for a signal this scarf shall be waved!” This performance of hers drew from my father the desperate