e of her
great contemporaries. As years perfected her excellence into its mellow
prime, emotion and warmth animated her art work. But at the outset Mile.
Sontag did little more than look lovely and pour forth such a flood
of silvery and delicious notes, that the Italians called her the
"nightingale of the North." The fanatical enthusiasm of the German youth
ran into wild excesses, and we hear of a party of university students
drinking her health at a joyous supper in champagne out of one of her
satin shoes stolen for the purpose.

When Mile. Sontag commenced her brilliant career the taste of operatic
amateurs was excessively fastidious. Nearly all outside of Germany
shared Frederick the Great's prejudice against German singers. Yet when
she appeared in Paris, in spite of hostile anticipation, in spite of her
reserve, timidity, and coldness on the histrionic side of her art, she
soon made good her place by the side of such remarkable artists as
Mme. Pasta and Maria Malibran. She never transformed herself into
an impassioned tragedienne, but through the spell of great personal
attraction, of an exquisite voice, and of exceptional sensibility,
taste, and propriety in her art methods, she advanced herself to a high
place in public favor.

Her parents designed Henrietta for their own profession, and in her
eighth year her voice had acquired such steadiness that she sang minor
parts at the theatre. A distinguished traveler relates having heard her
sing the grand aria of the _Queen of the Night_ in the "Zauberflote" at
this age, "her arms hanging beside her and her eye following the flight
of a butterfly, while her voice, pure, penetrating, and of angelic tone,
flowed as unconsciously as a limpid rill from the mountain-side." The
year after this Henrietta lost her father, and she went to Prague with
her mother, where she played children's parts under Weber, then _chef
d'orchestre_. When she had attained the proper age she was admitted to
the Prague Conservatory, and spent four years studying vocalization, the
piano, and the elements of harmony. An accident gave the young singer
the chance for a _debut_ in the sudden illness of the prima donna, who
was cast to sing the part of the _Princesse de Navarre_ in Boieldieu's
"Jean de Paris." The little vocalist of fifteen had to wear heels four
inches high, but she sang none the less well, and the audience seemed
to feel that they had heard a prodigy. She also took the part of the
h