strongly impressed with the powers of a performer, who can so tickle the ears, and confound the understandings, of a polished people.

It is not want of judgment; for no man has a better understanding of his art, abstracted from its practice: nor is it any deficiency in the means of execution; for he has a compass of nineteen notes, and could once sing any thing in any manner.

It is not easy, then, to account for varieties which savour of singularity, alike in the apprehension and expression of sentiment and musical phrases, for violence of transition, for sudden stops and breaks, for an admixture of disagreeable noises, for super-abundant ornament, and other defects, all which are yet blended with the most splendid and captivating transitions of style; with fire, energy, pathos, elegance, and ornament, not only in higher perfection than any other professor can singly exhibit, but which cannot be paralleled by the aggregate qualities of all his competitors.

The fact is, that these eccentricities are referrible to no single cause. In the first place, there is nothing so difficult to restrain as that luxuriance of ability, which continually tempts the possessor to its excessive employment; for there is a natural desire to put forth every power, upon all occasions, and to take the world by storm. In the next place, a professor, in the course of the laborious study and practice which such attainments imply, is liable, from the very fervour to which his sensibility and powers are brought by action, to be captivated and led astray by modes of expression, which better suit his own heated imagination, than the sober sympathies of a mixed audience, who cannot be affected so intensely. Hence extravagance of every kind.

Vocalists have been but too long, and too generally, looked upon as human machines,-two-legged upright instruments, adapted to carry to perfection the art of melodious intonation. Mind has been considered to be almost out of their province; and this opinion has been not a little aided by the total indifference of singers to the duties of the stage. "What a stick he is," in

nine cases out of ten, is the only description one shall ever hear of a first-rate singer's acting. Sedgewick, Incledon, Dignum, and Kelly, were certainly not gifted with powerful intellect; nor was the singing, even of the best of them, distinguished by any thing beyond its natural beauty of tone, and some mechanical excellences of execution. But the person we are now describing is a very different being. His singing is full of mind, full of sensibility; and his very defects are often to be traced to curious operations of the intellectual faculties. His head, therefore, as a craniologist would say, is worth examining.

Mr. Braham's temperament appears to be of that particular kind which is at once sensitive and melancholic. (We gather it only from what we have observed in the public exercise of his art.) His conceptions are rather powerful than sudden; his feelings more intense than irritable. The often and long disputed difference, as to the actual sensations with which actors enter into their parts, we look upon it, is to be settled in a very easy way. Actors, by habit, acquire a power of instant irritability and tranquillization, and of taking up a passion and laying it down in a moment-which faculty they obtain by continued professional excitation, and by studying to develope, with the rapidity of a chemical evolution, the passion they wish to represent. Thus by habitually assuming the tones, gestures, and physiognomical agitation, incident to the occasion, they gradually and insensibly, as it were, acquire the power of instantaneously calling up certain appropriate trains of feeling and action, and of as instantly sinking into repose. The intellectual process, to which a singer subjects himself, is somewhat dissimilar. He can assume few of the exterior marks of passion; and his sensibility is only to be exerted on the sounds, through which alone he expresses emotion. Hence all his feelings should be more intense, in proportion as their external demonstration is less vivid; and so far as our own experience goes, or as we have been able to arrive at a knowledge of what passes in the breasts of vocalists in general, unless

is broken. It is the same warmth of feeling, the same exuberance of fancy and of power, that tempt him to wander into an inapplicable superabundance of ornament; and the constant abuse of these conjoined powers of imagination and execution is the more wonderful, because he has not only a scientific and critical understanding of the art, but he has at all times had ample opportunity of displaying all his talents-in their proper places. It is, therefore, the more surprising that he should have yielded to the vulgar hope of manifesting all his various abilities at once, and of reconciling incongruities the most anomalous. But such has been the fact; and while it has, in almost every instance, deprived him of that highest praise which belongs to fine and pure taste, it has had a most prejudicial effect upon the judgment of the public, in giving birth to a race of imitators, who yawl out their tones, squeeze out their words, and trick up their second-hand mannerism with every piece of dirty ragged finery, their great model has worn out and cast off, and then expect to pass for admirable singers and fertile inventors. Thus, the whole ear of England is "rankly abused;" and a generation must pass away, before the art can be purified from the corruptions with which Mr. Braham's example has infected it. Something, however, will depend upon his successors. At present, there is no legitimate heir to his great honours. We earnestly hope, that some true genius will arise, who may have courage, firmness, and power enough to restore ease, grace, and polished refinement, and to re-establish dethroned nature; "instinct with feeling," but not "drunk with passion."

Mr. Braham, in his zenith, had a

voice of compass, tone, volume, and accuracy of intonation, superior to any we ever heard*-an execution incapable of embarrassment; a fancy that delighted to apply its unbounded means with the most profuse extravagance; a conception which manifested itself in grandeur, tenderness, and pathos; and an elocution, forcible and impressive. But, unfortunately, there was no continuity; though there was "every thing by turns," there was "nothing long.' He took his cue, indeed, from the place: and thus his singing was refined and voluptuous at the Opera; scientific, full of energy and captivation, in the orchestra; loud, gaudy, and declamatory, at the theatre. But the faults we have recited were common to him in all places; and seldom, indeed, could he be said to leave the train of pure satisfaction to flow freely, and without some check, for a few seconds of time.

How curious is the compensation to be observed in nature, and through nature extending into art. Harrison had few and feeble requisites; but he cultivated them with so delicate and so just an apprehension of his capacities, that he lived to exhibit the most finished model of particular excellence of any singer; and, by his example, he did more to purify and im prove the public taste than any of his predecessors. Braham has enjoyed natural gifts, more extensive, and commanding, than any competitor in art on record. He has left nothing unsought, that practice could obtain. He may, indeed, be said to have reached the summit of perfection in every thing but combination. has this vocalist so corrupted the judgment of his age, that half a century will scarcely suffice to restore British Vocal Art to a state of purity.

Yet

I HAVE a great notion that this article should have been written last month. "Aye! marry, should it, Mr. F. A.! that's already proved; and it will go nigh to be suspected so, shortly. Was not the late weather bad enough for the quivering nerves of your patients (prefix a syllable, friend! go on!) without enacting the Cyclops, hanging over them with hand uncertain where to choose, whetting your teeth with horrid delight, swallowing up the fattest with the eye of your œsophagus for a whole month together? Go to! thou art a naughty invisible, an unpunctual mystery!" "Nay! gracious Fractioso! I am always true as a toledo, to the appointed day." "Yea, but it may be, that with the worthy Mr. Ramsden, thou dost sometimes err a little in the month." "Good! you burn, as the children say at Hoodman blind." Now to proceed: I detest two parts out of the three, into which every discourse naturally divides itself: viz. the beginning and the end-and again, of these two abominations, the latter is with me in the worst odour. To begin is a great exertion. I have made many attempts to jump over this seed or root, as it were, of an article, and have essayed to commence in the middle, as the Irish say; but with no success-and I find nothing so proper, as a nice, short, paradoxical sentence, after the theory of my old Scotch usher, and the practice of our Mr. Table Talk. This sentence induces another of greater length,

This, or something like it, is in George Wither.

wherein the plot thickens; a third completes the climax of obscurity, and forms commonly at once a paragraph and a proëm. By this time, hand and pen are warmed, ideas and ink flow freely, and hurry skurry on we go, "over park, over pale, thorough bush, thorough briar," struggle toughly up the hills, swoop triumphantly down the dales, and dash through the hissing torrent, with the heart of Achilles, or William of Deloraine, and with the eagle-conquering speed of Bürger's ghostly heavy dragoon! But now as we approach the goal (the ninth folio of foolscap), dark fears come across me, how to arrest my flaming course. Now I do envy Lieut. Hatchway's anchorage in the clover field; nay! even the son of Kehama, for whose landing Mr. Southey has provided as effectually, if not quite so pleasantly. On-on they roll,-rapt headlong they roll

on,

On-on they roll, and now, with shivering shock,

Are dash'd against the rock that girds the pole,

Down from his shatter'd mail the unhappy

soul

Is dropt-ten thousand thousand fathoms down,

Till in an ice-rift 'mid the eternal snow,
Foul Arvalan is stopt.

There was a stop, my countrymen! But the Editor's trumpet sounds Halt! my pen is bona fide pulled up into line; this manoeuvre, however, being performed on the fore legs, in