some music, this evening," said Procter to me
one day, "and you must go with us." I went, and our hostess was the once
magnificent _prima donna!_ At intervals throughout the evening, with a
voice

"That crowds and hurries and precipitates
With thick fast warble its delicious notes,"

she poured out her full soul in melody. We all know her now as the
author of that exquisite "Week in a French Country-House," and her
fascinating book somehow always mingles itself in my memory with the
enchanted evening when I heard her sing. As she sat at the piano in all
her majestic beauty, I imagined her a sort of later St. Cecilia, and
could have wished for another Raphael to paint her worthily. Henry
Chorley, who was present on that memorable evening, seemed to be in a
kind of nervous rapture at hearing again the supreme and willing singer.
Procter moved away into a dim corner of the room, and held his tremulous
hand over his eyes. The old poet's sensitive spirit seemed at times to
be going out on the breath of the glorious artist who was thrilling us
all with her power. Mrs. Jameson bent forward to watch every motion of
her idol, looking applause at every noble passage. Another lady, whom I
did not know, was tremulous with excitement, and I could well imagine
what might have taken place when the "impassioned chantress" sang and
enacted Semiramide as I have heard it described. Every one present was
inspired by her fine mien, as well as by her transcendent voice. Mozart,
Rossini, Bellini, Cherubini,--how she flung herself that night, with all
her gifts, into their highest compositions! As she rose and was walking
away from the piano, after singing an air from the "Medea" with a pathos
that no musically uneducated pen like mine can or ought to attempt a
description of, some one intercepted her and whispered a request. Again
she turned, and walked toward the instrument like a queen among her
admiring court. A flash of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder that
jarred the house, stopped her for a moment on her way to the piano. A
sudden summer tempest was gathering, and crash after crash made it
impossible for her to begin. As she stood waiting for the "elemental
fury" to subside, her attitude was quite worthy of the niece of Mrs.
Siddons. When the thunder had grown less frequent, she threw back her
beautiful classic head and touched the keys. The air she had been called
upon to sing was so wild and weird, a dead silence fell