s the grief it uttered before.

"There is the hall-mark of the great genius: Unity. It is the same
but different. In one and the same phrase we find a thousand various
feelings of woe, the misery of a nation. In one and the same chord we
have all the various incidents of awakening nature, every expression of
the nation's joy. These two tremendous passages are soldered into one by
the prayer to an ever-living God, author of all things, of that woe
and that gladness alike. Now is not that introduction by itself a grand
poem?"

"It is, indeed," said the Frenchman.

"Next comes a quintette such as Rossini can give us. If he was ever
justified in giving vent to that flowery, voluptuous grace for which
Italian music is blamed, is it not in this charming movement in which
each person expresses joy? The enslaved people are delivered, and yet
a passion in peril is fain to moan. Pharaoh's son loves a Hebrew woman,
and she must leave him. What gives its ravishing charm to this quintette
is the return to the homelier feelings of life after the grandiose
picture of two stupendous and national emotions:--general misery,
general joy, expressed with the magic force stamped on them by divine
vengeance and with the miraculous atmosphere of the Bible narrative.
Now, was not I right?" added Massimilla, as the noble _sretto_ came to a
close.

"Voci di giubilo,
D' in'orno eccheggino,
Di pace l' Iride
Per noi spunto."

(Cries of joy sound about us. The rainbow of peace dawns upon us.)

"How ingeniously the composer has constructed this passage!" she went
on, after waiting for a reply. "He begins with a solo on the horn, of
divine sweetness, supported by _arpeggios_ on the harps; for the first
voices to be heard in this grand concerted piece are those of Moses and
Aaron returning thanks to the true God. Their strain, soft and
solemn, reverts to the sublime ideas of the invocation, and mingles,
nevertheless, with the joy of the heathen people. This transition
combines the heavenly and the earthly in a way which genius alone could
invent, giving the _andante_ of this quintette a glow of color that I
can only compare to the light thrown by Titian on his Divine Persons.
Did you observe the exquisite interweaving of the voices? the clever
entrances by which the composer has grouped them round the main idea
given out by the orchestra? the learned progressions that prepare us for
the festal _allegro_? Did you not get a glimpse, as it