musical reputation as a nation. Native music is at a low ebb at present;
and, while musical entertainments are in such general request as almost
to have excluded the "legitimate" drama from the stage, no attempt to
introduce any English opera has been recently made. Into such oblivion
or disrepute have English composers fallen, that some of the most
eminent have actually left London. One well-known veteran now lives in
honourable retirement in the Modern Athens. Another, once popular and
admired, "disgusted with London and the profession," and "having given
up all thoughts of again appearing before the London public as an
operatic composer," is said to have migrated in the capacity of
singing-master to a fashionable watering-place; while a third, once
equally well known, has left the kingdom altogether, and has settled
himself in Paris. The public ear has learned to appreciate music of a
high class; and, judging from the past, the manager perhaps dare not
incur the risk of bringing out a new native opera. It is certainly much
to be regretted that the existing demand should not be supplied from
native sources, and thus serve the purpose of national advancement in
the art; but English music does not _take_. Does the fault rest with the
public or with the musician? It is easy, and no doubt _convenient_,
contemptuously to apply the epithet, "_hacknied_," to the operas
recently adapted to the English stage; but how is it that the old
"hacknied" music of the Italians should be preferred to the novelties of
our native school? Here again the public taste has advanced too fast,
and, owing to the inferiority of our home productions, the foreigner has
gained possession of the market.[2] Where is the remedy for this
unfortunate state of things? Some master-mind, some musical Napoleon,
_may_ rise up and take the world by storm; but such an event is
particularly unlikely now. The hour generally makes the man, and the
necessities of the moment often call forth talents and energies, the
existence of which was wholly unsuspected by their possessors. For aught