by his total silence and inattention to all around, she supposed to be a native Italian who did not understand a word of English, went up to him, and peeping over his shoulder, exclaimed with more truth than discretion, “Ah! what a hideous attempt! that will never be like, I’m sure!” “I am very sorry you think so, ma’am,” replied the painter, coolly looking up in her face.  He must have read in that beautiful face an expression which deeply avenged the cause of his affronted picture.

We have been twice to the opera since we arrived here.  At the Pergola, Bassi, though a woman, is the Primo Uomo; the rare quality of her voice, which is a kind of rich deep counter-tenor, unfitting her for female parts.  Her voice and science are so admirable, that it would be delicious to hear her blindfold; but her large clumsy figure disguised, or rather exposed, in masculine attire, is quite revolting.

At the Cocomero we had the “Italiana in Algieri:”  the Prima Donna, who is an admired singer, gave the comic airs with great power and effect, but her bold execution and her ungraceful unliquid voice disgusted me, and I came away fatigued and dissatisfied.  The dancing is execrable at both theatres.

From one end of Italy to the other, nothing is listened to in the way of music but Rossini and his imitators.  The man must have a transcendant genius, who can lead and pervert the taste of his age as Rossini has done; but unfortunately those who have not his talent, who cannot reach his beauties nor emulate his airy brilliance of imagination, think to imitate his ornamented style by merely crowding note upon note, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, and semi-demi-semi-quavers in most perplexed succession; and thus all Italy, and thence all Europe, is deluged with this busy, fussy, hurry-skurry music, which means nothing, and leaves no trace behind it either on the fancy or the memory.  Must it be ever thus? are Paesiello, and Pergolesi, and Cimarosa—­and those divine German masters, who formed themselves on the Italian school and surpassed it—­Winter and Mozart[X] and Gluck—­are they eternally banished? must sense and feeling be for ever sacrificed to mere sound, the human organ degraded into a mere instrument,[Y] and the ear tickled with novelty and meretricious ornament, till the taste is utterly diseased?

There was a period in the history of Italian literature, when the great classical writers were decried and neglected, and the genius of one man depraved the taste of the age in which he lived.  Marini introduced, or at least rendered general and fashionable, that far-fetched wit, that tinsel and glittering style, that luxurious pomp of words, which was easily imitated by talents of a lower order:  yet in the Adonis there are many redeeming passages, some touches of real pathos, and some stanzas of natural and beautiful description:  and thus it is with Rossini; his best operas contain some melodies among the finest ever composed, and even in his worst, the ear is every now and then roused and enchanted by a few bars of graceful and beautiful melody, to be in the next moment again bewildered in the maze of unmeaning notes, and the clash of overpowering accompaniments.