Handel, by his great musical genius, conferred a two-fold benefit on the country of his adoption. He endowed it with a series of Oratorios which stand alone in their grandeur, for which the English of the present day are deeply grateful, and for which ages to come will honour his name; and before writing a note of his great sacred works, during the thirty years which he devoted to the production and superintendence of Italian Opera in England, he raised that entertainment to a pitch of excellence unequalled elsewhere, except perhaps at the magnificent Dresden Theatre, which, for upwards of a quarter of a century was directed by the celebrated Hasse, and where Augustus, of Saxony, took care that the finest musicians and singers in Europe should be engaged. Rousseau, in the _Dictionnaire Musicale_, under the head of "Orchestra," writing in 1754[27], says:-- "The first orchestra in Europe in respect to the number and science of the symphonists, is that of Naples. But the orchestra of the opera of the King of Poland, at Dresden, directed by the illustrious Hasse, is better distributed, and forms a better _ensemble_." Most of Handel's and Porpora's best vocalists were engaged from the Dresden Theatre, but the great Italian singers had already become citizens of the world, and settled or established themselves temporarily as their interests dictated in Germany, England, Spain, or elsewhere, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century there were Italian Operas at Naples, Turin, Dresden, Vienna, London, Madrid, and even Algiers--everywhere but in France, which, as has already been pointed out, did not accept the musical civilisation of Italy until it had been adopted by every other country in Europe, including Russia. The great composers, and above all, the great singers who abounded in this fortunate century, went to and fro in Europe, from south to north, from east to west, and were welcomed everywhere but in Paris, where, until a few years before the Revolution, it seemed to form part of the national honour to despise Italian music. As far back as 1645, Queen Christina of Sweden sent a vessel of war to Italy, to bring to her Court Balthazar Ferri, the most distinguished singer of his day. Ferri, as Rousseau, quoting from Mancini, tells us in his "Musical Dictionary," could without taking breath ascend and descend two octaves of the chromatic scale, performing a shake on every note unaccompanied, and with such precision that if at any time the note on which the singer was shaking was verified by an instrument, it was found to be perfectly in tune.