but I read and re-read the
"Divina Commedia" with ever-increasing amazement and admiration. Setting
aside all its weightier claims to the high place it holds among the
finest achievements of human genius, I know of no poem in any language
in which so many single lines and detached passages can be found of
equally descriptive force, picturesque beauty, and delightful melody of
sound; the latter virtue may lie, perhaps, as much in the instrument
itself as in the master hand that touched it--the Italian tongue, the
resonance and vibrating power of which is quite as peculiar as its
liquid softness.

While the stern face and forlorn figure of poor Biagioli seemed an
appropriate accompaniment to my Dantesque studies, nothing could exceed
the contrast he presented to another Italian who visited us on alternate
days and gave us singing lessons. Blangini, whose extreme popularity as
a composer and teacher led him to the dignity of _maestro di capella_ to
some royal personage, survives only in the recollection of certain
elderly drawing-room nightingales who warbled fifty summers ago, and who
will still hum bits of his pretty Canzoni and Notturni, "Care pupille,"
"Per valli per boschi," etc.

Blangini was a _petit maitre_ as well as a singing master; always
attired in the height of the fashion, and in manner and appearance much
more of a Frenchman than an Italian. He was mercilessly satirical on the
failures of his pupils, to whom (having reduced them, by the most
ridiculous imitation of their unfortunate vocal attempts, to an almost
inaudible utterance of _pianissimo_ pipings) he would exclaim, "Ma per
carita! aprite la bocca! che cantate come uccelli che dormano!"

My music master, as distinguished from my singing master, was a worthy
old Englishman of the name of Shaw, who played on the violin, and had
been at one time leader of the orchestra at Covent Garden Theatre.
Indeed, it was to him that John Kemble addressed the joke (famous,
because in his mouth unique) upon the subject of a song in the piece of
"Richard Coeur de Lion"--I presume an English version of Gietry's
popular romance, "O Richard, O mon Roi!" This Mr. Shaw was painfully
endeavoring to teach my uncle, who was entirely without musical ear, and
whose all but insuperable difficulty consisted in repeating a few bars
of the melody supposed to be sung under his prison window by his
faithful minstrel, Blondel. "Mr. Kemble, Mr. Kemble, you are murdering
the time, si