As soon as the lady had gone and we were left alone, I said, "But, maestro, that lady sang the word as it is pronounced in English." The retort came instantly: "Dat is so? Den it _ought_ to be as I say it." This aspersion on the intellectual intelligence of the Anglo-Saxon race struck me as decidedly amusing. On a quite different occasion I was present at a function in the course of which another foreign singing master was called upon to make a speech. I was, it is true, seated at a considerable distance from him, could not see him, and had not the slightest idea who he was. After listening carefully for some time, I turned to my table companion and said, "Could you tell me who is speaking, and what the language is?" He shrugged his shoulders and replied: "Upon my word I can't." We afterwards learnt that the language spoken was--English! I think that the most unsophisticated of my readers, if I have any, will be able to draw his own deductions. It is at least reasonable to ask why the more virile northerner should subjugate his personality and national characteristics to those of a southern race of different climate, different morals, and different physique. Let us consider for a moment the sister art of painting. It is quite unnecessary to extol the glories of the British school. Can you possibly imagine Turner, Hogarth, Gainsborough and Reynolds sitting down and quietly acquiescing, when a set of foreign painters came over to England and addressed them in such terms as these: "You English have lost, if you ever possessed it, the art of painting. We are going to stay over here and shew that we are your superiors, and you will have to submit quietly while we are taking time to do it?" I, at least, would not like to have been a member of _that_ deputation in case Turner and Hogarth were present. Yet this is not an unfair illustration of what English musicians have submitted to. Let us see what Mendelssohn thought on the subject. In a letter to Edward Devrient, dated Milan, July 13, 1831, he writes: "You can have no conception of an Italian chorus. As I was supposed to be in the land of music, I thought I would try and recognise one good voice among it, but they are all vile and roar like quacks at a fair.... No German can have an idea of what it is here--that is to say, no real German; for such a one as I met here is as much a real German as cheese and beer. "Fancy, Devrient, the fellow's expenses are paid for two years by the Ministry, in order that he may study Italian music, and on his return teach the Italian method of singing.... "Alas, you have no conception of these horrors.... The great fault is seeking to Italianise themselves, whilst what our northern nature has given them is the best and only good they have." Enough of the subject.