A story is told of a distinguished critic persuading himself, that with such a power of pourtraying "Medea's" emotions, Madame Pasta must possess "Medea's" features; but for some such natural conformity he seems to have thought it impossible that she could at once, by intuition, enter profoundly and sympathetically into all "Medea's" inmost feelings. Much might be said in favour of the critic's theory; it is unnecessary to say a word in favour of a performance by which such a theory could be suggested. We are told, that the believer in the personal resemblance between Pasta and "Medea" was sent a journey of seventy miles to see a visionary portrait of "Medea," recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum. To rush off on such a journey with such an object, may not have been very reasonable; to cause the journey to be undertaken, was perfectly silly. Probably, it was a joke of our friend Taylor's. * * * * * [Sidenote: PISARONI.] Madame Pisaroni made her début in Italy in the year 1811, when she was eighteen years of age. She at first came out as a soprano, but two years afterwards, a severe illness having changed the nature of her voice, she appeared in all the most celebrated parts, written for the musicos or sopranists, who were now beginning to die out, and to be replaced by ladies with contralto voices. Madame Pisaroni was not only not beautiful, she was hideously ugly; I have seen her portrait, and am not exaggerating. Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us, that another favourite contralto of the day Mariani (Rossini's original Arsace) was Pisaroni's rival "in voice, singing, and ugliness;" adding, that "in the two first qualities, she was certainly her inferior; though in the last it was difficult to know to which the preference should be given." But the anti-pathetic, revolting, almost insulting features of the great contralto, were forgotten as soon as she began to sing. As the hideous Wilkes boasted that he was "only a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in Europe," so Madame Pisaroni might have said, that she had only to deliver one phrase of music to place herself on a level with the most personally prepossessing vocalist of the day. This extraordinary singer on gaining a contralto, did not lose her original soprano voice. After her illness, she is said to have possessed three octaves (between four C's), but her best notes were now in the contralto register. In airs, in concerted pieces, in recitative, she was equally admirable. To sustain a high note, and then dazzle the audience with a rapid descending scale of two octaves, was for her an easy means of triumph. Altogether, her execution seems never to have been surpassed. After making her début in Paris as "Arsace," Madame Pisaroni resumed that part in 1829, under great difficulties. The frightfully ugly "Arsace" had to appear side by side with a charmingly pretty "Semiramide,"--the soprano part of the opera being taken by Mademoiselle Sontag.