ENGLISH VOCAL MUSIC. J3 



he, with a smile, if, alas ! at my age one can smile, and perhaps he did not 

 perceive it. ' I cannot exactly tell you my age, I was born in a chateau de 

 chain.' 'Ah! Yes/ said he, quickly interrupting me. 'In your time, the 

 civil registers of the state were not kept, or rather they did not exist. You 

 have seen Louis XV.' he continued with a tone of elevation, and almost of en- 

 thusiasm, ' did you ever see Peter the Great, Madame la Marschale.' ' I never 

 had that honour, I was in my province.' / 1 know that you were the inti- 

 mate friend of Cardinal Fleury. Is it true that he conceived the hope of 

 obtaining the crown for Louis XV. ? Had Louis XV. then, any chance of 

 of being elected Emperor ? ' ' Why, General, it was thought at the time 

 that the thing would have succeeded, but for the bad faith of the king of 

 Prussia, whom the cardinal never forgave for violating his word to the 

 king.' ' Frederick was more skilful than Fleury, but not more cunning ; 

 " il etaitfin, ce vieux Fleury (here there are two lines that are quite illegible,) 

 or perhaps in 1718.' ' It was,' replied Buonaparte 'the year of Aguessau's 

 exile. Did you know the Chancellor Aguessau ? ' ' I have often seen 

 him, General,' * he was the intimate friend of my father-in-law.' ' Were 

 you acquainted with Dubois and Cartouche ? ' I looked at him without 

 uttering a word, and with an air of such severity that I tremble when I think 

 of it. He appeared to think that it was in bad taste to send, and almost 

 seize the body of the Dowager Marchioness de Crequy, to question her 

 about Cartouche, and he smiled so sweetly and with so much expression, that 

 I was quite desorientfa. 'Allow me to kiss your hand,' he said, and I 

 took off my glove, with all the empressment used on such an occasion. 

 ' Nay, remove not your glove, my good mother,' he added with an air of 

 the deepest solicitude, and he afterwards carried his lips to the ends of my 

 poor decrepid centenary fingers which were uncovered : he then awarded me 

 the restitution of our woods with the most perfect grace, and next spoke to 

 me of the noble conduct of the Duke de Crequy Lesdeguieres at Rome, 

 adding that France was wrong to allow the destruction of that Pyramid of 

 the Vatican, which proclaimed the reparations the Courts of Rome had made 

 to that ambassador. He was, perhaps, not aware that upon the monument, 

 the demolition of which he so regretted, the Corsicans were characterized 

 as being a nation, infamous and odious to every people, and henceforth un- 

 worthy of serving kings. 



I was also at a loss to explain to myself why he styled me Madame la 

 Marschale ; but, when I heard that he always said Monsieur 1'Amiral to poor 

 La Glissoniere, and who had never navigated but between Dovor and Calais,' 

 it struck me that he wished to deceive himself as to the date, origin, and 

 nature of his consular authority." 



ENGLISH VOCAL MUSIC. 



THE grand secret of the talismanic effect which vocal music is 

 capable of exercising over the human mind lies in expression, and 

 yet nothing is, in general, less understood or attended to, either in 

 precept or in practice. 



When a celebrated female singer asked Handel how it was that 

 her execution of the very first bars of his song, " Dear liberty that 

 gives fresh beauty to the sun," always drew from the audience peals 

 of applause, though she was not conscious of its being other than a 

 very ordinary passage, he replied, " It is because you sing the 

 word ' Dear liberty/ as though liberty were really dear to you." 



M. M. No. 91. L 



