plied the painter, coolly looking up in her face. He must have read
in that beautiful face an expression which deeply avenged the cause of
his affronted picture.

We have been twice to the opera since we arrived here. At the Pergola,
Bassi, though a woman, is the _Primo Uomo_; the rare quality of her
voice, which is a kind of rich deep counter-tenor, unfitting her for
female parts. Her voice and science are so admirable, that it would be
delicious to hear her blindfold; but her large clumsy figure
disguised, or rather _exposed_, in masculine attire, is quite
revolting.

At the Cocomero we had the "Italiana in Algieri:" the Prima Donna, who
is an admired singer, gave the comic airs with great power and effect,
but her bold execution and her ungraceful unliquid voice disgusted me,
and I came away fatigued and dissatisfied. The dancing is execrable at
both theatres.

From one end of Italy to the other, nothing is listened to in the way
of music but Rossini and his imitators. The man must have a transcendant
genius, who can lead and pervert the taste of his age as Rossini has
done; but unfortunately those who have not his talent, who cannot
reach his beauties nor emulate his airy brilliance of imagination,
think to imitate his ornamented style by merely crowding note upon
note, semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, and semi-demi-semi-quavers in
most perplexed succession; and thus all Italy, and thence all Europe,
is deluged with this busy, fussy, hurry-skurry music, which means
nothing, and leaves no trace behind it either on the fancy or the
memory. Must it be ever thus? are Paesiello, and Pergolesi, and
Cimarosa--and those divine German masters, who formed themselves on
the Italian school and surpassed it--Winter and Mozart[X] and
Gluck--are they eternally banished? must sense and feeling be for ever
sacrificed to mere sound, the human organ degraded into a mere
instrument,[Y] and the ear tickled with novelty and meretricious
ornament, till the taste is utterly diseased?

There was a period in the history of Italian literature, when the
great classical writers were decried and neglected, and the genius of
one man depraved the taste of the age in which he lived. Marini
introduced, or at least rendered general and fashionable, that
far-fetched wit, that tinsel and glittering style, that luxurious pomp
of words, which was easily imitated by talents of a lower order: yet
in the Adonis there are many redeeming passages, some t