to THAT, however he might have
sought to improve on the masterpieces of others. Is not this common?
The least little critic, in reviewing some work of art, will say, "pity
this, and pity that;" "this should have been altered,--that omitted."
Yea, with his wiry fiddlestring will he creak out his accursed
variations. But let him sit down and compose himself. He sees no
improvement in variations THEN! Every man can control his fiddle when it
is his own work with which its vagaries would play the devil.

And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples. She is the spoiled sultana
of the boards. To spoil her acting may be easy enough,--shall they
spoil her nature? No, I think not. There, at home, she is still good
and simple; and there, under the awning by the doorway,--there she still
sits, divinely musing. How often, crook-trunked tree, she looks to thy
green boughs; how often, like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does she
struggle for the light,--not the light of the stage-lamps. Pooh, child!
be contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights. A farthing
candle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars.

Weeks passed, and the stranger did not reappear; months had passed, and
his prophecy of sorrow was not yet fulfilled. One evening Pisani was
taken ill. His success had brought on the long-neglected composer
pressing applications for concerti and sonata, adapted to his more
peculiar science on the violin. He had been employed for some weeks, day
and night, on a piece in which he hoped to excel himself. He took, as
usual, one of those seemingly impracticable subjects which it was his
pride to subject to the expressive powers of his art,--the terrible
legend connected with the transformation of Philomel. The pantomime of
sound opened with the gay merriment of a feast. The monarch of Thrace
is at his banquet; a sudden discord brays through the joyous notes,--the
string seems to screech with horror. The king learns the murder of his
son by the hands of the avenging sisters. Swift rage the chords, through
the passions of fear, of horror, of fury, and dismay. The father pursues
the sisters. Hark! what changes the dread--the discord--into that long,
silvery, mournful music? The transformation is completed; and Philomel,
now the nightingale, pours from the myrtle-bough the full, liquid,
subduing notes that are to tell evermore to the world the history of
her woes and wrongs. Now, it was in the midst of this complic