THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

VOL. 12, No. 330.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1828. [PRICE 2d.




WHY ARE NOT THE ENGLISH A MUSICAL PEOPLE?


We cannot help it.--_Massinger's Roman Actor._

Astronomy, music, and architecture, are the floating topics of the day;
on the second of these heads we have thrown together a few hints, which
may, probably prove entertaining to our readers.

The English are not--you know, reflective public--a musical people; this
has been said over and over again in the musical and dramatic critiques
of the newspapers. True it is that we have no _national music_, like our
neighbours the Welsh, the Irish, or the Scotch; for our music, like out
language, is a mere _riccifamento_, stolen from every nation in Europe.
But our king (God bless him) is an excellent musician, and plays the
violoncello most delightfully; and we have an Academy of Music. Then we
have an Italian Theatre that burns the feet and fingers of all who
meddle with its management--witness, Mr. Ebers, who, by being "married"
to sweet sounds, lost the enormous sum of 47,000_l_.--it must be owned,
an unfortunate match, or as Dr. Franklin would have said, "paying rather
too dear for his whistle." We have too an _English Opera House_, where
scarcely any but _foreign_ music is heard, and which, to the
ever-lasting credit of its management, has transplanted from the warm