characters for successive years, with an ever-growing reputation.  In 1847 the memorable operatic schism occurred which led to the formation of the Royal Italian Opera at Convent Garden.  The principal members of the company who seceded from Her Majesty’s Theatre were Mmes.  Grisi and Persiani, Signor Mario, and Signor Tamburini.  The new establishment was also strengthened by the accession of several new performers, among whom was Mlle. Alboni, the great contralto.  “Her Majesty’s” secured the possession of Jenny Lind, who became the great support of the old house, as Grisi was of the new one.  The appearance of Mme. Grisi as the Assyrian Queen and Alboni as Arsace thronged the vast theatre to the very doors, and produced a great excitement on the opening night.  The subject of our sketch remained faithful to this theatre to the very last, and was on its boards when she took her farewell of the English public.  The change broke up the celebrated quartet.  It struggled on in the shape of a trio for some time without Lablache, and was finally diminished to Grisi and Mario, who continued to sing the duo concertante in “Don Pasquale,” as none others could.  They were still the “rose and nightingale” whom Heine immortalizes in his “Lutetia,” “the rose the nightingale among flowers, the nightingale the rose among birds.”  That airy dilettante, N. P. Willis, in his “Pencilings by the Way,” passes Grisi by with faint praise, but the ardent admiration of Heine could well compensate her wounded vanity, if, indeed, she felt the blunt arrow-point of the American traveler.

A visit to St. Petersburg in 1851, in company with Mario, was the occasion of a vast amount of enthusiasm among the music-loving Russians.  During her performance in “Lucrezia Borgia,” on her benefit night, she was recalled twenty times, and presented by the Czar with a magnificent Cashmere shawl worth four thousand rubles, a tiara of diamonds and pearls, and a ring of great value.  From the year 1834, when she first appeared in London, till 1861, when she finally retired, Grisi missed but one season in London, and but three in Paris.  Her splendid physique enabled her to endure the exhaustive wear and friction of an operatic life with but little deterioration of her powers.  When she made her artistic tour through the United States with Mario in 1854, her voice had perhaps begun to show some slight indication of decadence, but her powers were of still mature and mellow splendor.  Prior to crossing the ocean a series of “farewell performances” was given.  The operas in which she appeared included “Norma,” “Lucrezia Borgia,” “Don Pasquale,” “Gli Ugonotti,” “La Favorita.”  The first was “Norma,” Mme. Grisi performing Norma; Mlle. Maria, Adalgiza; Tamberlik, Pollio; and La-blache, Oroveso; the last performance consisted of the first act of “Norma,” and the three first acts of “Gli Ugonotti,” in which Mario sustained the principal tenor part.  “Rarely,