action. Hoarse, broken, and destroyed as
was the voice, her grand style spoke to the sensibilities of the great
artist. The opera was "Anna Bolena," and from time to time the old
spirit and fire burned in her tones and gestures. In the final mad scene
Pasta rallied into something like her former grandeur of acting; and in
the last song with its roulades and its scales of shakes ascending by a
semitone, this consummate vocalist and tragedienne, able to combine form
with meaning--dramatic grasp and insight with such musical display as
enter into the lyric art--was indicated at least to the apprehension
of the younger artist. "You are right!" was Mme. Viardot's quick and
heartfelt response to a friend by her side, while her eyes streamed with
tears--"you are right. It is like the 'Cenacolo' of Leonardo da Vinci at
Milan, a wreck of a picture, but the picture is the greatest picture in
the world."

HENRIETTA SONTAG.

The Greatest German Singer of the Century.--Her Characteristics as an
Artist.--Her Childhood and Early Training.--Her Early Appearances in
Weimar, Berlin, and Leipsic,--She becomes the Idol of the Public.--Her
Charms as a Woman and Romantic Incidents of her Youth.--Becomes
affianced to Count Rossi.--Prejudice against her in Paris, and her
Victory over the Public Hostility.--She becomes the Pet of Aristocratic
_Salons_.--Rivalry with Malibran.--Her _Debut_ in London, where she is
welcomed with Great Enthusiasm.--Returns to Paris.--Anecdotes of her
Career in the French Capital.--She becomes reconciled with Malibran in
London.--Her Secret Marriage with Count Rossi.--She retires from the
Stage as the Wife of an Ambassador.--Return to her Profession after
Eighteen Years of Absence.--The Wonderful Success of her Youth
renewed.--Her American Tour,--Attacked with Cholera in Mexico and dies.

I.

The career of Henrietta Sontag, born at Cob-lenz on the Rhine in 1805,
the child of actors, was so picturesque in its chances and changes that
had she not been a beautiful and fascinating woman and the greatest
German singer of the century, the vicissitudes of her life would have
furnished rich material for a romance. Nature gave her a pure soprano
voice of rare and delicate quality united with incomparable sweetness.
Essentially a singer and not a declamatory artist, the sentiment of
grace was carried to such a height in her art, that it became equivalent
to the more robust passion and force which distinguished som