poser and performer for the
expression of Beaumarchais's Cherubino; and we have seen the composer,
and the performer who was true to the composer, both choose, instead of
expressing an equivocal jackanapes, to produce and complete a beautiful
work of art. Were they right or were they wrong? Criticism, analysis,
has said all it could, given all its explanations; artistic feeling only
remains to judge, to condemn, or to praise: this one fact remains, that
in the work of the great composer, we have found only certain lovely
patterns made out of sounds; but in them, or behind them, not a vestige
of the page Cherubino.

IN UMBRIA.

A STUDY OF ARTISTIC PERSONALITY.

... grande, austera, verde,
Da le montagne digradanti in cerchio,
L'Umbria guarda.--CARDUCCI.

The autumn sun is declining over the fields and oak-woods and vineyards
of Umbria, where--in the wide undulating valley, inclosed by high
rounded hills, bleak or dark with ilex, each with its strange terraced
white city, Assisi, Spello, Spoleto, Todi--the Tiber winds lazily along,
pale green, limpid, scarce rippled over its yellow pebbles, screened by
long rows of reeds, and thinned, yellowing poplars, reflecting dimly the
sky and trees, the pointed mediaeval bridges and the crenelated towers
on its banks; so clear and placid that you can scarcely bring home to
yourself that this can really be the Tiber of Rome, the turbid mass of
yellow water which eddies sullen and mournful round the ship-shaped
island, along by Vesta's temple, beneath the cypressed Aventine, and
away into the desolate Campagna. Gradually, as the sun sinks, the valley
of the Tiber fills with golden light moving along, little by little,
travelling slowly up the wooded hillocks; covering the bluish mountains
of Somma and Subasio with a purple flush, making the white towns rosy
on their flanks, and then dying away into the pale amber horizon,
rosy where it touches the hill, pearly, then bluish where it merges
imperceptibly into the upper sky. Bluer and bluer become the hills,
deeper and deeper the at first faint amber; the valley is filled with
grey-blue mist; the hills stand out dark blue, cold, and massive; the
sky above becomes a livid rose colour; there is scarcely a filament of
cloud, and only a streak of golden orange where the sun has disappeared.
There is a sudden stillness, as when the last chords of a great symphony
have died out. All the way up the hill on whi