find "The
Castle of Otranto," "The Mysterious Mother," etc., by Horace
Walpole. Now Macaulay says that Horace Walpole's works rank
as high among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the
Strasburg pie among the dishes described in the _Almanach des
Gourmands_. None but an unhealthy and disorganized mind could
have produced such literary luxuries as the works of Walpole.

France had not yet recovered from the empty formalism of
the preceding century, Bernardin de St. Pierre was a kind
of colonial Mlle. Scudery, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, one
of the sparks which were to ignite the French Revolution,
writes his popular opera to the silly story of "The Village
Soothsayer." Had not Gluck written to the classics he would
have had to write "a la Watteau."

In Germany, conditions were better; for the so-called Romantic
school had just begun to make headway. In opera, however, this
school of Romanticism only commenced to make itself felt later,
when we have a crop of operas on Fouque's "Undine" as well as
"Hofmann's Tales."

It is as though opera had to dress according to the prevailing
fashion of the day. The very large sleeves of one year look
strange to us a little later. Just so is it with opera; for
those old operas by Mehul, Spontini, Salieri, and others all
wear enormous crinolines, while the contemporary instrumental
works of the same period, unfettered by fashion, still possess
all the freedom which their limited speech permitted them to
have. Thus we see that opera is necessarily a child of the times
in which it is written, in contrast to other music which echoes
but the thought of the composer, thought that is not necessarily
bound down to any time, place, or peculiarity of diction.

In Germany, Italian opera was never accepted by the people as
it was in France. In the latter country, opera had to be in the
vernacular and practically to become _French_. Lully's operas
were written to libretti by Quinault and Corneille; and while,
as early as 1645, Paris imported its opera from Italy, this
art form was rapidly modified to suit the public for which
it was secured. Even with Piccini and Gluck, and down to
Rossini and Meyerbeer, this nationalism was infused into the
foreign product. In Germany the case was entirely different,
for up to the very last, Italian opera was a thing apart.
Although German composers, such as Mozart and Paer, wrote
Italian opera, the "Singspiel" (a kind of opera comique),
found its c