neral stage presentation of almost unparalleled
completeness for that time.

Mme. Devrient retired permanently from the stage in the year 1849,
having amassed a considerable fortune by her professional efforts. She
made a second matrimonial venture with a rich Livonian proprietor named
Bock, with whom she retired to his estate. Her retirement occasioned
profound regret throughout Germany, where she was justly looked on as
one of the very greatest artists, if, indeed, even this reservation
could be made, who had ever shone on their lyric stage. The Emperor
Francis I. paid Mme. Schroeder a compliment which had never before been
paid to a German singer. He ordered her portrait to be painted in all
her principal characters, and placed in the collection of the Imperial
Museum. Six years after her farewell from the stage, an Italian critic,
Scudo, heard her sing in a private house in Paris, and speaks very
disparagingly of her delivery of the melodies of Schubert in a weak,
thin voice. She, like Malibran, possessed one of those voices which
needed incessant work and practice to keep it in good order, though she
did not possess the consummate musical knowledge and skill of Malibran.
She was a woman of great intelligence and keen observation; an artist of
the most passionate ardor and impetuosity, always restrained, however,
by a well-studied control and reserve; in a word, a great lyric
tragedienne rather than a great singer in the exact sense of that word.
She must be classed with that group of dramatic singers who were the
interpreters of the school of music which arose in Germany after the
death of Mozart, and which found its most characteristic type in Carl
Maria von Weber, for Beethoven, who on one side belongs to this school,
rather belonged to the world, like Shakespeare in the drama, than to a
single nationality. Mme. Schroeder-De-vrient died February 9, 1860,
at Cologne, and the following year her marble bust was placed in the
Opera-House at Berlin.

GIULIA GRISI.

The Childhood of a Great Artist.--Giulietta Grisi's Early Musical
Training.--Giuditta Grisi's Pride in the Talents of her Young
Sister.--Her Italian _Debut_ and Success.--She escapes from a Managerial
Taskmaster and takes Refuge in Paris.--Impression made on French
Audiences.--Production of Bellini's "Puritani."--Appearance before the
London Public.--Character of Grisi's Singing and Acting.--Anecdotes of
the Prima Donna.--Marriage of Mlle. Grisi.--