argaret Thornton, a
number of semi-attached couples, Lady Lufton and her son, the De
Joinvilles visiting the Osbornes, from France, Miss Dudleigh and Sarona,
Alton Locke, on a visit home, Signor and Signora Mancini, sad-eyed Rachel
Leslie with her young brother, a stately descendant of Sir Charles
Grandison, the Royal Family, and all the nobility. When everybody
went,--every one fortunate enough to get a ticket and a seat in the
crowded hall,--it would be invidious to mention names. It was the fashion
to go; and so everybody went who was in the fashion. Then of course the
unfashionables went, that it might not be supposed they were of that
class; and with these, all those who truly loved music were obliged to
contend for a place. Fashion was on the side of music, till it got the
audience fairly into the hall and in their seats; and then music had to
struggle with fashion. It had to fix and melt the wandering eyes, to tug
at the worldly and the stony heart. And here it was that Arnold's music
won the victory. The ravishing bonnet of Madam This or That no longer
distracted the attention of its envying admirers, or of its owner; the
numerous flirtations that had been thought quite worth the price of the
ticket, and of the crushed flounces, died away for a few moments; the
dissatisfaction of the many who discovered themselves too late in
inconspicuous seats was drowned in the deeper and sadder unrest that the
music awakened. For the music spoke separately to each heart, roused up
the secrets hidden there, fanned dying hopes or silent longings. It made
the light-hearted lighter in heart, the light-minded heavy in soul. Where
there was a glimpse of heaven, it opened the heavens wider; where there
was already hell, it made the abysses gape deeper. For those few moments
each soul communed with itself, and met with a shuddering there, or an
exaltation, as the case might be.

After those few moments, outside life resumed its sway. Buzzing talk swept
out the memory of the music. One song from an opera brought thought back
to its usual level. Men and women looked at each other through their
opera-glasses, and, bringing distant outside life close to them, fancied
themselves in near communion with it. The intimacy of the opera-glass was
warm enough to suit them,--so very near at one moment, comfortably distant
at the next. It was an intimacy that could have no return, nor demanded
it. One could study the smile on the lip of one of the