had she permitted her voice to swell into one of those bravura passages, of which her execution was so very peculiar and so perfectly unequaled, than I felt as if some magic process was being performed upon me, which took me back again to something—­I know not what to call it—­which I had neither heard nor felt for nearly twenty years.  Involuntarily, unconsciously, my eyes filled with tears, and I felt as much embarrassed as a young lady of fifteen might be who suddenly found herself in the act of betraying emotions which she was far indeed from wishing to display.”  William Gardiner visited Mme. Catalani in 1846.  “I was surprised at the vigor of Mme. Catalani,” he says, “and how little she was altered since I saw her at Derby in 1828.  I paid her a compliment upon her good looks.  ‘Ah!’ said she, ’I am growing old and ugly.’  I would not allow it.  ‘Why, man,’ she said, ‘I’m sixty-six!’ She has lost none of that commanding expression which gave her such dignity on the stage.  She is without a wrinkle, and appears to be no more than forty.  Her breadth of chest is still remarkable; it was this which endowed her with the finest voice that ever sang.  Her speaking voice and dramatic air are still charming, and not in the least impaired.”

About the year 1848 Catalani and her family left Italy for fear of the cholera, which was then raging, and sought refuge in Paris.  While residing there she heard Jenny Lind.  One morning, a few days after, the servant announced a strange visitor, who would not give her name.  On being ushered in, the timid stranger, who showed a plain but pleasant face, knelt at her feet and said falteringly, “I am Jenny Lind, madame—­I am come to ask your blessing.”  A few days afterward Catalani was stricken with the cholera, which she so much dreaded, and died on June 12th, at the age of sixty-nine.

It is not a marvel that the public was captivated with Catalani.  She had every splendid gift that Nature could lavish—­surpassing physical beauty, a matchless voice, energy of spirit, sweetness of temper, and warm affections.  Her whole private life was marked by the utmost purity and propriety, and she was the soul of generosity and unselfishness.  The many business troubles in which she was involved were caused by her husband’s rapacity and narrowness of judgment, and not by her own disposition to take advantage of the necessities of her managers—­a charge her enemies at one time brought against her.

Her unrivaled endowments (for that taken all in all they were unrivaled is now pretty well acknowledged) ought to have raised her much higher in rank as an artist.  Her education even as a singer was extremely superficial, and she became an object of universal admiration without ever knowing anything about music.  As she advanced in her career, her whole ambition seemed to be narrowed down to surprising the world by displays of vocal power.  As long as these displays would dazzle and astonish, it made little