nearly in convulsions, tearing yelps and howls violently out of their
lungs, closed hands pressed on their breasts, heads thrown back, faces
inflamed, veins swollen, and stomach panting. I know not which of the
two, eye or ear, is more agreeably affected by this display.... For my
part, I am certain that people applaud the outcries of an actress at the
opera as they would the feats of a tumbler or rope-dancer at a fair....
Imagine this style of singing employed to express the delicate gallantry
and tenderness of Quinault. Imagine the Muses, the Graces, the Loves,
Venus herself, expressing themselves this way, and judge the effect. As
for devils, it might pass, for this music has something infernal in it,
and is not ill adapted to such beings."

From this and similar accounts it will be seen that opera in France
during the latter part of the eighteenth century had, notwithstanding
Jean Jacques's garrulous sarcasms, advanced a considerable way toward
that artificial perfection which characterizes it now. Music was a topic
of discussion, which absorbed the interest of the polite world far more
than the mutterings in the politi-cal horizon, which portended so fierce
a convulsion of the social _régime_. Wits, philosophers, courtiers, and
fine ladies joined in the acrimonious controversy, first between the
adherents of Lulli and Rameau, then between those of Gluck and Piccini.
The young gallants of the day were wont to occupy part of the stage
itself and criticise the performance of the opera; and often they
adjourned from the theatre to the dueling-ground to settle a difficulty
too hard for their wits to unravel. The intense interest appertaining to
all things connected with music and the theatre noticeable in the French
of to-day, was tenfold as eager a century ago. Passionate curiosity,
even extending to enthusiasm, with which that worn-out and utterly
corrupt society, by some subtile contradiction, threw itself into all
questions concerning philosophy, science, literature, and art, found