meanest servant." The captain is touched by his devotion, and in the bluff, good-natured fashion of the sailor, agrees to take Des Grieux. In the fourth act the death of Manon puts an end to this sad but very human tragedy. The music is one long duet, full of the highest emotional expression, and musically reaches to the highest heights of pure tragedy. The scene shows us a desolate dreary plain on the outskirts of New Orleans. Manon and Des Grieux by their dress and manner show the destitution of their circumstances. "Lean all your weight on me, love," murmurs Des Grieux, as he supports his companion, worn out by fatigue and privation. Manon suffers from thirst, and Des Grieux, who can find no water in this arid waste, goes out to search farther afield. Memories of the life that is past now come to torture poor Manon, and when Des Grieux comes in again he finds her hopelessly distraught and at the point of death. Very touchingly does the music Manon sings picture the ebbing life, the faltering breath, the approach of the end; and, with a long, low phrase on one note, Manon, whose last words are that her love for Des Grieux will never pass although her sins will be cleansed away, sinks peacefully in her long last sleep. Bursting into tears Des Grieux falls senseless over her body. It is inevitable to return to a comparison between this work of Puccini's and that of Massenet. Massenet remains supreme in his own place from the delicate and spirited characterisation of his music. His Manon is essentially French, entirely of the eighteenth century, bringing out in the music all the artificiality, all the airs and graces. While the story is not without flesh and blood, it remains as a thing apart, moving in its own sphere, full of its own special atmosphere. Puccini takes the same French story and gives us a moving lyric drama, which is on a far broader plane, is essentially human and common to every place, every race and all time, since it deals with purely elemental passions. Since _Manon_ was the work by which Puccini's operatic music was first given to the English music-lovers, the following extracts from the critiques which appeared after its first performance in England will be of interest.