perfection.... The successes of his youth did not prevent him from
continuing to study, and this great artist applied himself with so much
perseverance that he contrived to change in some measure his style, and
to acquire another and superior method, when his name was already famous
and his fortune brilliant."


V.

Let us return from the consideration of Faustina's most brilliant
contemporary to Hasse and his wife. We have already seen that this great
prima donna retired from the stage in 1753, at the age of fifty-two. The
life of the distinguished couple during this period is described with
much pictorial vividness in a musical novel, published several years
since, under the name of "Alcestis," which also gives an excellent idea
of German art and music generally. In 1760 Hasse suffered greatly from
the bombardment of Dresden by the Prussians, losing among other property
all his manuscripts in the destruction of the opera-house--a fact
which may partly account for the oblivion into which this once admired
composer has passed. The loss was peculiarly unfortunate, for the
publication of Hasse's works was then about to commence at the expense
of the King. He and his wife removed to Vienna, where they remained
till 1775, when they retired to Venice, Faustina's birthplace. Two
years before this Dr. Burney visited them at their handsome house in the
Landstrasse in Berlin, and found them a humdrum couple--Hasse groaning
with the gout, and the once lovely Faustina transformed into a jolly old
woman of seventy-two, with two charming daughters. As he approached the
house with the Abate Taruffi, Faustina, seeing them, came down to meet
them. Says the Doctor: "I was presented to her by my conductor, and
found her a short, brown, sensible, lively old lady, who expressed