greatest dramatic singers who ever lived,
and her brother Manuel also attained considerable eminence as singer,
song-composer, and teacher. The whole family were richly dowered with
musical gifts, and Maria was probably one of the most versatile and
accomplished musical artists of any age. At the age of thirteen she was
a professed musician, and at fifteen, when she came with her parents to
London, she obtained a complete triumph by accidentally performing in
Rossini's "Il Barbiere," to supply the place of a prima donna who was
unable to appear.

We can not tarry here to enter into the details of her interesting life.
Her father having taken her to America, where she fulfilled a number
of engagements with an increasing success, she finally espoused there
a rich merchant named Malibran, much older than herself. It was a most
ill-advised marriage, and, to make matters worse, the merchant failed
very soon afterward. Some go so far as to say that he foresaw this
catastrophe before he contracted his marriage, in the hope of regaining
his fortune by the proceeds of the singer's career. However that may be,
a separation took place, and Mme. Malibran returned to Paris in 1827.
Her singing in Italian opera was everywhere a source of the most
enthusiastic ovation, and, as she rose like a star of the first
magnitude in the world of song, so the young De Beriot was fast earning
his laurels as one of the greatest violinists of the day. In 1830 an
indissoluble friendship united these two kindred spirits, and in 1832 De
Beriot, Lablache, the great basso, and Mme. Malibran set out for a tour
in Italy, where the latter had operatic engagements at Milan, Rome,
and Naples, and where they all three appeared in concerts with the most
_eclatant_ success--as may well be imagined.

At Bologna, in 1834, it is difficult to say whether the cantatrice,
or the violinist, or the inestimable basso, produced the greatest
sensation; but her bust in marble was there and then placed under the
peristyle of the Opera-house.

Henceforward De Beriot never quitted her, and their affection seems to
have increased as time wore on. In the year following she appeared in
London, where she gave forty representations at Drury Lane, performing
in "La Sonnambula," "The Maid of Artois," etc., for which she received
the sum of three thousand two hundred pounds. De Beriot would not have
made this amount probably with his violin in a year.

After a second journey to I