learn that the first company of Italian singers came here in
the reign of Charles II.: they were brought by Killigrew from Venice,
about 1688; but they did not perform whole operas, only detached scenes
in recitative, and not in any public theatre, but in the houses of the
nobility. Thus, Italian music was loved and cultivated very early in
England, and London was the next capital, after Vienna, which
established and supported an Italian Opera. But, as we never do things
by halves, we had soon afterwards, two opposition houses. This proves
that the English have a _taste for music_; indeed they have much more
judgment than some of their neighbours, which makes it still more to be
regretted that nothing is done in England towards the advancement of
music as a science. Is the world of sound and the soul of song
exhausted? Why should we, who are marching in every other direction,
stand still in this? But no; what Orpheus did with _music_, we are
striving to accomplish by _steam_; what he effected by quietly touching
his lyre, we study with the atmospheres and condensers of high and low
pressure engines.

The writer of a delightful paper in the _Foreign Review_, No. 3, in
tracing the rise and progress of music, inquires what has become of "its
loftier pretensions, its celestial attributes, its moral and political
influence." He then facetiously observes, "How should we marvel to see
the Duke of Wellington, like another Epaminondas, take his flute out of
his pocket to still the clamour of the opposition, or Mr. Peel reply to
the arguments of Mr. Huskisson with an allegro on the fiddle."

The Greeks were not such grave people as some may be inclined to think
them. Among them, poetry and music were so intimately connected, that
they were in fact one and the same. It is not so with us; we have Byron
and Moore, in poetry; but where are their parallels in English music!

"Music," says Plutarch, "was the universal language of Greece, the
sacred vehicle of history, philosophy, laws, and morals;" but in England
it is little more than a mere amusement to while away the evening, or at
best, but a branch of _female_ education. Pianos are become articles of
furniture to be met with in almost every other genteel house; Miss and
her sisters sit down by turns, and screw themselves up to _Ah vous
dirai_, or "I'd be a butterfly"--till some handsome young fellow who has
stood behind her chair for six months, turned over her music, or
accomp