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I heard Jenny Lind sing at concerts, but never in an opera. I have no doubt many of the readers of THE MONTHLY will recollect hearing her at the concerts she gave in Toronto.

I regret much that I never had an opportunity of hearing either Sontag or Malibran. With the exception of these two brilliant stars, I believe I have heard all the best singers of the day.

As to instrumental players-I mean on the violin-I heard Paganini, De Beriot, Vieuxtemps, Ole Bull, Griesbach and others. Of these Paganini was facile princeps. He first appeared at the Opera House in London. Many of its trustees were opposed to its being used for other than operatic performances. Eventually it was announced that he would play a selections of pieces-some of them his own compositions.

The house was very crowded, and as he advanced upon the stage he was greeted with loud applause. He made three very low bows-and when he placed the violin to his shoulder he smiled upon it with the greatest satisfaction, as if it had been his fairy or his guardian angel. I think he began by playing the Carnival de Venice, which was one of his stock pieces. He was very pale and thin, his black hair parted in the middle, and curling down the back of his head. His face was cadaverous, attributed to having been for many years in an Italian prison, on a charge of some political offence. One could not help noticing the extreme length of his fingers. Altogether he had a weird appearance.

On the second night that I heard him, while he was playing, a roll of music took fire in the orchestra, and made quite a blaze; although he observed it, he continued to play with the same serenity. This reassured the audience and the fire was soon extinguished.

He had the most extraordinary power over the instrument. At one time cajoling it to produce the most

delicious notes in linked sweetness long drawn out,' at another, as it were, whipping it, until it shrieked and sobbed, and groaned and moaned. In a word, if ever a violin spoke in varied moods, it was the violin of Paganini.

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Some few months after the death of the late king, her present Majesty honoured the Opera House with a visit. She had held a Drawing-Room during the day, and the majority of the audience were in court dresses. When she entered her box Madame Grisi sang the first verse of the National Anthem. The sight of the audience standing, displaying diamonds, feathers, beautiful dresses, and sparkling orders was quite thrilling. beauty of some of the women could not be equalled in any other metropolitan city in the world. In one of the boxes, seated side by side, were Lady Seymour-who had won the prize for beauty at the Eglinton Tournament—and her sister the Hon. Mrs. Norton, who was, in my opinion, far more intellectually beautiful than Lady Seymour. The three fair foresters' were also pre-eminently beautiful. The Countess of Blessington was also theresurrounded by notabilities, Comte D'Orsay, Trelawny, and others. The Countess was then handsome, and her figure had not attained the large proportions it afterwards acquired. The Count was certainly one of the handsomest men of his day, and was, as Byron described him, un cupidon déchainé.' There was another remarkably handsome man, one of the Stanleys, with a peculiar oval face, who looked for all the world as if he had stepped into life from one of the picture frames of his ancestors in the Knowsley Gallery.

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It is to be regretted I think that the standard of music cannot be a little raised among the amateur lady singers of Toronto. Some of them sing ballad songs very pleasingly. Some time since, I heard an attempt made by a lady to sing a passage from the Opera of Orfeo and Eurydice. If sung

with taste it is one of the most wailing, mournful airs in the whole répertoire of music. Orféo is in a most distracted state and begins the air with the words 'Ché faro senza Eurydice,' and then he calls her, again and again-pausing for her answer. The lady sang the air as if it had been a jig-the word Eurydice' followed fast and followed faster-so quick and increasing were the 'dirges' of his despair. One felt doubtful whether Orfeo or the lady was most to be pitied.

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My theatrical reminiscences go as far back as the performances of Edmund Kean in Richard the Third and Macbeth. I was too young at the time to fully appreciate the beauty of his acting. Yet I must have felt some inspiration from it, as I was for some time after constantly bothering my brothers and sisters to hear me declaim from both plays. Macready's acting always appeared to me to be stiff and artificial. It is true he declaimed well, but one could never lose sight of the fact that it was Macready, not the character before one.

Of all actors who lost their selfconsciousness and individuality, I think Fechter was in this respect admirable. Hamlet himself was before the audience, Fechter acted so naturally. Until his time no one had performed the part of the Prince so well. He played some one hundred and fifty nights, and people never seemed tired of hearing him. Young, in his day, performed the part well and gracefully, but his acting was far inferior to Fechter's.

The first Charles Mathews used to give most amusing entertainments. He was always ready to catch the fly. ing follies of the day. For instance, Charlotte and Werther had been translated from the German into English, and there was among foolish people quite a craze for everything sentimental. Mathews, in ridicule of this, personated a German cook dressed in a white biband tucker, with

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a white nightcap on his head. read a few passages from the bookthe most extravagant and nonsensical he could pick out. Then he clasped his hands, raised his eyes, and exclaimed, 'Oh! Charlotte, Oh! Werther-Oh divine sensibility! Hulloa there, have you skinned those eels?' The answer, 'Yes,' came from Matthews, who was a great ventriloquist. 'Are they all alive?' 'Yes.' Is the water hot 'Yes.' boiling hot?' Then put in the eels at once. Oh Charlotte! Oh Werther, Oh divine sensibility.'

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He stood behind rather a high table upon the stage, and it was surprising to see the rapidity with which he changed his dresses.

His son, the late Charles Mathews, was also a talented actor. His acting improved much after his marriage with Madam Vestris, who had been for many years on the stage. She was always a charming actress, full of life and spirit.

I was at the theatre when Fanny Kemble made her début as Juliet. When she first came on the stage, she looked dreadfully pale and nervous, and it was not until the applause, which lasted for some time, had ceased, that she partially recovered her self-possession. Notwithstanding all these disadvantages, she performed the part— particularly the balcony scene-very finely. Her youth gave her great advantage over her contemporaries who were playing the same part.

While staying at an hotel in New York, I was introduced to Captain Marryat, who had lately arrived from England. A party was formed to go and see Keeley and his wife in some farce. At supper, on our return, Captain Marryat, after praising the acting of the Keeleys, said that he could not help remarking upon the difference between the subordinate actors in the States and those in England. He thought the actors in the States seemed to play with more energy, and strove to do every justice to their

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The stars come forth like sparkling diamonds bright, Casting their beams through endless realms of space, And view our lovely world with still delight;

While silv'ry lakes reflect the moon's bright face.

Oh! day is very beautiful in June,

With waving trees and grass and birds and flowers,

But night seems more harmoniously in tune

With chords that vibrate in our pensive hours.

LITERATURE CONNECTED WITH THE CANADA PACIFIC RR.

BY NICHOLAS FLOOD DAVIN.

HE Canadian Pacific Railway will be completed, we hope and believe, long before Sir John Macdonald will have an opportunity of looking down on it from over the shining verge of hovering clouds. The building of a railway across the continent has evidently been one of the Prime Minister's most cherished projects, and indeed it is a work which, for magnitude and usefulness, will have distanced all others.

Long prior to the existence of the Dominion of Canada, the germinal idea of a great route across that portion of the continent over which the flag of Canada rules, stirred in the minds of men on whose attention its geographical and physical advantages were forced; and on the facts connected with the Canadian Pacific Railway the history and literature which gathered round that idea cast an interesting and instructive light. Over this great work, which from rail to rolling stock will be as much as anything in the world of to day, the expression and emblem of nineteenth century conditions, the tangible evidence of a new order of things in politics, in society, in mechanics, there comes from the earliest dawn of New World history, a large imperial air, with the scent in it of social and political forces which have disappeared. We are witnessing the progress, the oldest may hope to behold the completion, of an undertaking, which will bring the Pacific, and with the Pacific, China and the East, nearer to the Atlantic and to Europe, than would have been possible by any of the routes, the thought of which for more than two centuries filled men

of enthusiastic foresight and constructive imagination with visions of a boundless trade with the East. It is not possible for a cultivated man to think of the day when the traveller shall take his ticket in Halifax to be carried across the Dominion to Victoria, and thence to Hong Kong, without recalling Sebastian Cabot in 1512 in the palace of Ferdinand, planning under the monarch's eye an exploration of the North-West Passage to Asia. The Courts of Henry IV., of Louis XIII., and of Louis XIV. were often occupied with projects for the discovery of a passage through the interior of the continent to the Grand Ocean, with China, of course, as the ultimate objective. These projects were taken up with renewed ardour under the Regency, and the Regent had the refusal of the same plan which afterwards carried Lewis and Clark to the Columbia. The early French explorers were full of the idea of finding a river which should conduct them to the Western Sea. In a very curious tract written in French-The Logbook of Jean Alphonse de Xantoigne, first pilot of Roberval, published in 1542, we read of the Saguenay: 'I believe that this river comes from the China Sea (mer du Cathay) for here it issues with a strong current and runs with a terrible tide.' In a history published in 1609, the French possessions in North America were described as bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean. In 1612, Charles de Bourbon, Lieutenant-General in New France, commissioned Champlain to build forts as far in the interior as he could penetrate with the object of

finding a practicable road to China and the East. La Salle conceived the idea of opening a way to China and Japan through the lakes and rivers of Canada, and the village and rapids near Montreal took their name of Lachine from his grand but abortive enterprise. The story of the Verendrye, father and sons, is one of scantily requited efforts which are among the most stirring and touching in the annals of heroism. All their endeavours seemed about to be crowned with success, when on the 1st of January, 1743, the brothers saw the Rocky Mountains rise before them. On the 12th of the same month the Chevalier de la Verendrye prepared to ascend them to contemplate, from their summits' the sea which he knew to be on the other side. He was doomed to disappointment. Dissensions having broken out among the tribes inhabiting that part of the country, he was forced to return without experiencing the joy which the sight of that ocean two centuries earlier had filled the hearts of Cortez and Balboa. On the 22nd July, 1799, Sir Alex. Mackenzie wrote on the Rock which separates the Prairie of the Centre from the Pacific Slope, his name, whence he had come, and the date. The feat was worthy of record. The centenary of that day however will not have arrived when railway cars, with all modern appliances, will wind through one of the passes of those mountains. This great consummation was what many of the modern but worthy successors of previous projections whose names should never be forgotten in Canada, desired to see. But they fell like the advance guard of an army over whose bodies other men march to victory.

Poor and crude as the United States were fifty years ago, as compared with their wealth and advancement today, and as England was then, they were yet far ahead of the mother country in their readiness to take in the far reaching consequences of Stephenson's invention. A portion of

the New York Central was chartered in 1825; what was not inaptly styled the railway mania struck Massachu setts in 1826, Pennsylvania in 1827, and Maryland and South Carolina in 1828. The Baltimore and Ohio Railway was begun July 4th, 1828.

Amongst us a few minds were conscious of the importance of the new era which was at hand, and we find Mr. Henry Fairbairn writing in 1825 to the newspapers, and proposing a railway system for Canada in connexion with that of the United States. He had some fair idea of the extent of the net work of railways which would one day vein the Republic, and the magnitude of attendant results. If the advantages which were coming into being in the United States were to be successfully contended with, this could only be effected by building similar works here, so as to bring to the Atlantic the agricultural exports of the colonies, and to secure the stream of emigration which otherwise would be rapidly diverted to the United States. We now know the stream of emigration, nor any fair portion of it, was not secured, and in fact many years elapsed, and many battles were fought with ignorance and prejudice before the Intercolonial Railway was built, and Mr. Fairbairn's early suggestions translated into fact.

In 1829 Commissioners were ap pointed by Sir G. Arthur, LieutenantGovernor, and the Legislature of Upper Canada, to survey the waters between the Ottawa and Lake Huron in order to test the practicability of effecting a navigable communication between the two.

One of the earliest of those who stated the policy of a part rail and a part water route was a young officer of Engineers, who, some thirty years ago, published a pamphlet entitled 'Canada in 1848.' The pamphlet was written at Bytown, now Ottawa, the Capital of the Dominion. No place in the whole country is more calcu lated to impress its great possibilities

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