And let me now inform the ignorant opponents of the Opera, that there are certain grand dramatic effects attainable on the lyric stage, which, without the aid of music, could not possibly be produced. Music has often been defined; here is a new definition of it. It is _the language of masses_--the only language that masses can speak and be understood. On the old stage a crowd could not cry "Down with the tyrant!" or "We will!" or even "Yes," and "No," with any intelligibility. There is some distance between this state of things and the "Blessing of the daggers" in the _Huguenots_, or the prayer of the Israelites in _Moses_. On the old stage we could neither have had the prayer (unless it were recited by a single voice, which would be worse than nothing) before the passage, nor the thanksgiving, which, in the Opera, is sung immediately after the Red Sea has been crossed; but above all we could not obtain the sublime effect produced by the contrast between the two songs; the same song, and yet how different! the difference between minor and major, between a psalm of humble supplication and a hymn of jubilant gratitude. This is the change of key at which, according to Stendhal, the women of Rome fainted in such numbers. It cannot be heard without emotion, even in England, and we do not think any one, even a professed enemy of Opera, would ask himself during the performance of the prayer in _Mosé_, whether it was natural or not that the Israelites should sing either before or after crossing the Red Sea. Again, how could the animation of the market scene in _Masaniello_ be rendered so well as by means of music? In concerted pieces, moreover, the Opera possesses a means of dramatic effect quite as powerful and as peculiar to itself as its choruses. The finest situation in _Rigoletto_ (to take an example from one of the best known operas of the day) is that in which the quartet occurs. Here, three persons express simultaneously the different feelings which are excited in the breast of each by the presence of a fourth in the house of an assassin, while the cause of all this emotion is gracefully making love to one of the three, who is the assassin's sister. The amorous fervour of the "Duke," the careless gaiety of "Maddalena," the despair of "Gilda," the vengeful rage of "Rigoletto," are all told most dramatically in the combined songs of the four personages named, while the spectator derives an additional pleasure from the art by which these four different songs are blended into harmony. A magnificent quartet, of which, however, the model existed long before in _Don Giovanni_.