considerable feeling, and he
excelled in ballads. In 1817 he visited America, where he was well
received.

The career of John Braham is of interest to all who love the traditions
of English music. In his early days he was so poor that he was obliged
to sell pencils for a living, but his musical talent being discovered by
Leoni, a teacher of repute, who took him under his tutelage, he appeared
at the age of thirteen at Covent Garden. At the age of about twenty he
was fitted for the Italian stage, and at once made his mark. Even
Crescentini, who was placed in the background, acknowledged Braham's
talent, and when he sang in Italy his name was freely quoted as being
one of the greatest living singers. As he grew older he attained a
prodigious reputation, never before equalled in England, and whether
singing a simple ballad, in oratorio, or in the grandest dramatic
music, the largeness and nobility of his style were matched by a voice
which in its prime was almost peerless. Braham amassed a large fortune,
and then aspired to be a manager, an experiment which quickly reduced
him to poverty. In 1840 he visited America, and made a grand operatic
and concert tour. In private life he was much admired, and was always
found in the most conservative and fastidious circles, where as a man of
culture, a humorist, and a raconteur, he was the life of society.

Braham was frequently associated in opera with Madame Angelica Catalani,
the last of the great singers who came before the public in the
eighteenth century. She was a woman of tall and majestic presence, a
dazzling complexion, large, beautiful blue eyes, and features of ideal
symmetry,--a woman to entrance the eye as well as the ear. Her voice was
a soprano of the purest quality, embracing a compass of nearly three
octaves, and so powerful that no band could overwhelm its tones. The
greatest defect of her singing was that, while the ear was bewildered
with the beauty and tremendous power of her voice, the feelings were
untouched,--she never appealed to the heart. She could not thrill like
Mara, nor captivate her hearers by a birdlike softness and brilliancy,
like Billington. She simply astonished her audiences.

Her private life was as exemplary as her public career was dazzling. She
was married, after a most romantic courtship, to a M. de Vallebregue, a
French captain of Hussars, who turned out to be an ignorant, stupid man,
but a driver of hard bargains for his wife's talents