I need scarcely remind the intelligent reader, that the composer of three master-pieces in such very different styles as _Il Barbiere_, _Semiramide_, and _Guillaume Tell_, might have a dozen followers, whose works, while all resembling in certain points those of their predecessor and master, should yet bear no great general resemblance to one another. All the composers who came immediately after Rossini, accepted, as a matter of course, those important changes which he had introduced in the treatment of the operatic drama, and to which he had now so accustomed the public, that a return to the style of the old Italian masters, would have been not merely injudicious, but intolerable. Thus, all the post-Rossinian composers adopted Rossini's manner of accompanying recitative with the full band; his substitution of dialogued pieces, written in measured music, with a prominent connecting part assigned to the orchestra, for the interminable dialogues in simple recitative, employed by the earlier Italian composers; his mode of constructing finales; and his new distribution of characters, by which basses and baritones become as eligible for first parts as tenors, while great importance is given to the chorus, which, in certain operas, according to the nature of the plot, becomes an important dramatic agent. I may repeat, by way of memorandum, what has before been observed, that nearly all these forms originated with Mozart, though it was reserved for Rossini to introduce and establish them on the Italian stage. In short, with the exception of the very greatest masters of Germany, all the composers of the last thirty or forty years, have been to some, and often to a very great extent, influenced by Rossini. The general truth of this remark is not lessened by the fact, that Hérold and Auber, and even Donizetti and Bellini (the last, especially, in the simplicity of his melodies), afterwards found distinctive styles; and that Meyerbeer, after _Il Crociato_, took Weber, rather than Rossini, for his model--the composer of _Robert_ at the same time exhibiting a strongly marked individuality, which none of his adverse critics think of denying, and which is partly, no doubt, the cause of their adverse criticism. * * * * * [Sidenote: ROSSINI'S RETIREMENT.]