stage-load and a half or two stage-loads of ladies
and gentlemen went down from this place to hear them. Thalberg is
said to be death, in its most horried shape, on the piano, and it
is probably true; while Vieuxtemps is represented as a fiddler of
considerable skill, considering his opportunities, which he no
doubt is. We haven't heard either of them since they were quite
small, and unless they come out here and reduce the price of their
tickets to their value,--say about sixty-two and a half cents a
dozen,--it is possible that we sha'n't hear them any more. When we
ride forty miles, at an expense of at least ten dollars, extras not
included, to hear a couple of itinerant Dutchmen torture a brace of
unoffending instruments into fits, until the very spirit of music
howls in sympathy, if some one will cave in our head with a
brickbat, we will feel greatly obliged.

"But seriously, Thalberg and Vieuxtemps have never done us any
harm that we know of, and we don't suppose they intend to. We
wouldn't much mind hearing their music, for no doubt it is nearly,
if not quite, as good as that of the average common run of
Dutchmen, which, as the latter will tell you, is saying a good
deal."

And yet musical culture was said to be in its infancy in America at that
time!

In Boston, Vieuxtemps, after an absence of fourteen years, was
criticised thus: "We cannot see in M. Vieuxtemps the spark of genius,
but he is a complete musician, and the master of his instrument. Tone so
rich, so pure, so admirably prolonged and nourished, so literally drawn
from the instrument, we have scarcely heard before; nor such vigour,
certainty, and precision, such nobility and truth in every motion and
effect. We recognise the weakness for sterile difficulties of extreme
harmonics."

Vieuxtemps was also subject to comparison with Sivori, rather to the
former's disparagement. "The one plays the violin like a great
musician, the other like a spoiled child of nature, who has endowed him
with the most precious gifts. Intrepid wrestlers, both, and masters of
their instrument, they each employ a different manner. M. Vieuxtemps
never lets you forget that he plays the violin, that the wonders of
mechanism which he accomplishes under your eye are of the greatest
difficulty and have cost him immense pains, whereas M. Sivori has the
air of being ignorant that he hold