predecessors. We have some living composers whose works are not without
some merit; but they can scarcely be placed even in the second class.
Their compositions, when compared with the works of the great
continental masters, are tame, spiritless, and insipid; we find in them
no flashes of real genius, no harmonies that thrill the nerves, no
melodies that ravish the sense, as they steal upon the ear. Effort is
discernible throughout this music, the best of which is formed
confessedly upon Italian models; and nowhere is the universal law, of
the inferiority of all imitation, more apparent.

These observations apply with especial force to the _dramatic_ music, or
compositions of the English school. The term opera, is incorrectly used
in England. The proper meaning of the word is, a musical drama,
consisting of recitative airs and concerted pieces; without the
intervention of spoken dialogue, it should consist of music, and music
alone, from the beginning to the end. With us it has been popularly
applied to what has been well characterized as "a jargon of alternate
speech and song," outraging probability in a far higher degree than the
opera properly so called, and singularly destructive of that illusion or
deception in which the pleasure derived from dramatic representations
principally consists. Music is in itself no mean vehicle of expression;
but, when connected with speech or language, it gives a vast additional
force and power to the expression of the particular passion or feeling
which the words themselves contain. It appears, as one listens to an
opera, as if the music were but a portion, or a necessary component part
of the language of the beings who move before us on the scene. We learn
to deem it part of their very nature and constitution; and it appears,
that, through any other than the combined medium of speech and song, the
passions, we see exhibited in such intensity, could not be adequately
expressed. The breaking up of this illusion by the intervention of mere