art's house, who gave me, as a
memorial of the great composer whom I had so enthusiastically admired, a
lock of his hair, and the opening paragraph of his will, which was
extremely touching and impressive in its wording.

The plaintive melody known as "Weber's Waltz" (said to have been his
last composition, found after his death under his pillow) was a tribute
to his memory by some younger German composer (Reichardt or Ries); but
though not his own, it owed much of its popularity to his name, with
which it will always be associated. Bellini transferred the air,
verbatim, into his opera of "Beatrice di Tenda," where it appears in her
song beginning, "Orombello, ah Sciagurato!" A circumstance which tended
to embitter a good deal the close of Weber's life was the arrival in
London of Rossini, to whom and to whose works the public immediately
transferred its demonstrations of passionate admiration with even more,
than its accustomed fickleness. Disparaging comparisons and contrasts to
Weber's disadvantage were drawn between the two great composers in the
public prints; the enthusiastic adulation of society and the great world
not unnaturally followed the brilliant, joyous, sparkling, witty
Italian, who was a far better subject for London _lionizing_ than his
sickly, sensitive, shrinking, and rather soured German competitor for
fame and public favor.

The proud, morbid sensitiveness of the Northern genius was certainly in
every respect the very antipodes of the healthy, robust, rejoicing,
artistic nature of the Southern.

No better instance, though a small one, perhaps, could be given of the
tone and temper in which Rossini was likely to encounter both adverse
criticism and the adulation of amateur idolatry, than his reply to the
Duchess of Canizzaro, one of his most fanatical worshipers, who asked
him which he considered his best comic opera; when, with a burst of
joyous laughter, he named "Il Matrimonio Secreto," Cimarosa's enchanting
_chef-d'oeuvre_, from which, doubtless, Rossini, after the fashion of
great geniuses, had accepted more than one most felicitous suggestion,
especially that of the admirable finale to the second act of the
"Barbiere." It was during this visit of his to London, while Weber lay
disappointed and dying in the dingy house in Great Portland Street, that
this same Duchess of Canizzaro, better known by her earlier title of
Countess St. Antonio, as a prominent leader of fashionable taste in
musical