I cannot close my journals of Paris without desultorily stringing together a few more of the contrasts and varieties of life and opinion which it is possible to embrace there within a small compass of time, if the world of people — not things — be entered. When the Stradella breakfast I have already mentioned broke up, one of its fashionable patrons of art was bound for the Arsenal—another to inquire after the well-doing of his brood mares. M. le Prince—, resolved to make a musical day of it, departed for one of M. Tilmant's delightful matinées, where some of the best chamber-music in Paris was that season to be heard. My flight took me further, in every sense of the word; yet, within half an hour, I was walking in the leafless alleys of Le Jardin des Plantes, as busily engaged among the traces left by its departed master-spirit, Cuvier, as if, so shortly before, I had not been entangled among the duets, choruses, and finales of the new opera, and the just-discovered chemical contrivance which was to get up a stage sunset, — like Nattier's rose, fifty times more beautiful than the reality.

I lingered late in Le Jardin, and left it all natural history. Dinner took me back, from the wonders of the vegetable and animal world, to the wonder of the operatic hemisphere.

To exchange Nuremburg for Paris, without intermediate pause — and Paris, too, convulsed by expectations of the Guizot ministry's début, was not altogether unlike passing from the calmness of a cloister to those mansions of Pandemonium, if there be such, where Hate, and Contention, and restless Ambition are allowed to wear the masks of Luxury and Civilisation. As my one travelling companion from Frankfort was French to the thorough warpoint, as impatient to arrive in time for the first-fruits of the crise as I should have been for the first night of Meyerbeer's long-deferred opera, it was a peculiar piece of good fortune that, besides the courtesy which belongs to an old name, he should also possess the eye of an artist, and the perception of a poet — nay, more, during a South German tour, have recently visited the church of St. Sebald, and St. John's burial-ground, and admired them little less fervently than myself. Thus, having contented himself with a significant “au revoir bientôt” to the fortifications of Mayence, for the rest of our forty-eight hours' ride we had abundant neutral ground to meet upon. We could admire, in concord, the beautiful old building upon the hill but a mile or two before the traveller in the mallepost reaches his dinner at Châlons sur-Marne.

When I first began to indulge myself with a few holiday weeks in France and Germany, it was as little likely that I should ever publish any thing on the Manners of either country, as it was probable that I should ever take pen in hand to write about Art in the days when I used to leave my bed betimes to hammer out Hook's harpsichord lessons and the “Battle of Prague” on the feeblest of all old-fashioned square piano-fortes. The public will care little for the temptations which have led me to venture an essay then so little contemplated; but I hope I may be permitted, for honesty's sake, to state the amount and nature of the materials from which the following sketches of Music and Manners have been arranged, with a constant reference to English wants and English capabilities.

They are the fruit of six journeys. As I have travelled for the most part alone, a diary, for one sufficiently habituated when at home to penwork, was only a natural companion. As, moreover, I have never, since the days of Hook and Kotzwara, been able to listen to music without speculating upon the circumstances which gave it peculiarity of form and character, or noticing the place as well as the manner of its execution, — it was, again, not unnatural that a favourite pursuit, indulged in a manner which links it with so many engaging subjects of fancy and observation, should give a predominant colour to my familiar chronicle of Paris, and Berlin, and Dresden.

Though a more oddly assorted quartett of authorities could hardly be picked out than Voltaire, Dr. Burney, Zelter, and the musical editor of “The Atlas,” — each of them gives his drachma or his mite of information to those who seek the causes of the present state of Berlin Opera in its past history. From the philosopher-courtier, the friend of Johnson and Garrick, the worshipper of Goethe, and the pleasant man of modern art and letters, who mingles in his speculations the Hummels of Germany and the Hunts of Cockayne with a graceful and good-humoured individuality, we learn different parts of one and the same history.

But a little way up the Linden Strasse stands the magnificent Opera House, where all the splendours of the French lyric drama are exhibited under the nominal direction of M. le Chevalier Spontini. Though its interior decorations were faded when I saw it, it seems to me the handsomest and best proportioned theatre I have ever entered; large without vastness, and having that habitable look which is indispensable to the comfort of a place of public amusement, and, perhaps, unattainable in such a building as the Schauspiel Haus, where classical rigour of style is attempted. This is the identical theatre built by Knobersdorf, one of the chamberlains of Frederic II., with the grandeur of which, in the first days of Voltaire's sojourn at the Prussian court, he delighted to pique his far-away enemies at Paris.

A trifle of tobacco-smoke to be swallowed allowed for, the drive from Brunswick to Halberstadt was pleasant enough. The afternoon was glorious—the perfection of autumn weather, and the road offers some agreeable objects. Between Brunswick and Wolfenbuttel stands the Duke's country-house of Richmond, which is apparently as English in its Elizabethan style, and in the trimness of the rich garden round it, as in its name. Then the trees on either side of the way were hung with a profusion of apples, plums, and pears, glowing with every sunny colour of the season, and so appetizing as to make it positively disappointing that, at the first change of horses, no other refection was to be procured than a cup of coffee and a cigar. Every trenchbank and field enclosure, too, showed a roadside Flora of poppies, campanulas, and huge mulleins, gay enough to attract any eye that is sensitive to rich colour. Not long after Wolfenbuttel was left behind, the Brocken began to rise on the horizon; — and what is there in the world so engaging to the fancy as watching the gradual growth of a hill, more especially if the hill have a name and a legend?

My companions in the schnellpost were cheerful and good-natured. While waiting under the vine which clothes the wall of the Brunswick post-house, we had become very sociable. As we jogged on, we discussed the Festival just over, and agreed that Mendelssohn was the musical hope of modern Germany.

I have adverted to the close connection between the literature and wit of France and its musical drama; to the direct court influences which also, since the time of Charles the Ninth's proclamation, have had their share in determining its colour. To this day there remain features which distinguish the fashionable amateurship of its patrons from any similar encouragement of national or exotic art in England. Les gants jaunes of Paris are better-instructed listeners to music than the corresponding class in London; if they are more despotic in the world behind the scenes, more rigorous in the arrangement of its im-morals, according to a strangely methodical rule and system, they are more intelligent before the curtain. I could point to a box in L'Académie Royale, — arranged with a Sybaritic luxury of gilt and damasked elbow chairs, and a tiny salon behind it for refreshment, or play — where, even on the hundredth night of an opera, long ere the dance is to begin, some two or three of its tenants may be seen from the very commencement of the performance. The rest, as a body, are far more deeply interested in the composition, far more capable of playing their own favourite morceaux on the piano, or of singing the motivi which severally suit their voices, than any number of our own fine gentlemen, who make an effort to drop into their places at our Italian Opera, to hear Rubini's last song, or who begin to listen just before Fanny Elssler is to exhibit the first witticism of her dainty feet, or Cerrito to take her first butterfly flutter in air.

I have had few musical wishes stronger than to hear the “Guillaume Tell” of Rossini in Paris. Cloyed as we Londoners had been with Bellini's honeyed, but intensely languid melodies, — the staple of our operatic fare for two seasons, — I looked forward to the representation of this chef-d'œuvre, with all the impatience of one eager for a new sensation. It is rather comfortless for the musical amateur to reflect, how completely within the range of possibilities it is, that ten years of opportunity should leave him little that is untried to desire. He will do well to recollect, that it is such a moment of satiety, that a pedantic and immoderate preference for some particular school or period is apt to seize hold of the unwary; who forgets how little chance there is of his retaining any balance of judgment, or wholesome powers of enjoyment, if he once become a mere collector or an antiquarian.

To modify the opening phrase of Crabbe's delightful “Lover's Journey” — “It is the soul that hears.” This is more than the whole truth; yet there are times, when circumstances throw a wet blanket over the most resolute enthusiasm; and certain it is that my first fulfilment at L'Académie Royale of so long-cherished an expectation left but a very trifling impression on my mind.

In nothing is the difference between home and foreign arrangements more striking than in the quantity of entertainment deemed fashionable and sufficient. Talk of the English as lukewarm in the matter of public amusements! Where else shall we find audiences willing to be shut up in the strait seats of a theatre, or the cramping benches of an opera pit, from seven o'clock in the evening till an hour past midnight? — where else, frames robust enough to endure, as at our provincial festivals, four hours of oratorio in the morning, and five hours of concert in the evening, with all the intermediate hurries and cares attendant on the pleasure? “Rap, rap all day, and fruz, fruz all neet,” the old Duchess of Gordon's laconic description of life in London, might be adopted for the motto of quantity in English dissipation, whether its object be the new missionary from Hindustan or Owyhee, or the new Italian songstress, who has two notes more in the altissimo scale, and sixteen demisemi-quavers more in one breath, than any of her predecessors!

I was sitting revolving this important distinction in my mind on the second morning, and rejoicing in the rationality of a few hours' pause, when Dr. Mendelssohn kindly paid me a visit.