The operas of Meyerbeer are remarkable examples of a skill entirely devoted to the production of _ad captandum_ effects. Everything imposing, grandiose, delusive in splendor, or dazzling in cheap finery is to be found in these works, which are arranged on a grand plan. Meyerbeer's distribution of arias, duets, ensembles, and finales is the result of a deliberate eclecticism. He took for his purpose all that seemed most effective in the Italian and French schools. His finales, for instance, are often ridiculously weak in melodic ideas, as in that of the second act of "Les Huguenots," but they are always worked up with a clever combination of action, stage pictures, and pretentious orchestration. His arias are deliberately designed to catch the applause of an audience. He uses ballets, processions, pageants, and glittering masses of people on the stage to hide his poverty of ideas, and, as Dr. Parry well notes, when he has absolutely no idea at all, he distracts your attention from that fact by a cadenza for the clarinet. His most successful combination of music and pageantry is in the return of Selika to her kingdom in "L'Africaine." His poorest is the wedding festivities of Valentine in "Les Huguenots." There is no heart in Meyerbeer's works. He was capable of taking infinite pains, but all for the sake of instantaneous effect. To quote Dr. Parry again: "The scenes are collections of the most elaborate artifices, carefully contrived and eminently effective from the baldest theatrical point of view. But for continuity, development, real feeling, nobility of expression, greatness of thought, anything that may be truly honored in the observance, there is but the rarest trace." A good deal has been said about Meyerbeer's powers of characterization, and his works have been compared to historical novels. But a very little analysis will show that the characterization in "Les Huguenots," for instance, is almost purely pictorial. What impression would be left of St. Bris without his black velvet clothes and courtly bearing? And how prominent would Marcel be without his costume, and his war cry "Ein feste Burg?" Marguerite de Valois is characterized by white satin, diamonds, and _arias di bravura_. The truth is that Meyerbeer's characterization is altogether superficial. The best that can be said of Meyerbeer is that he was amazingly clever, and that in a few places in his works, finding theatrical effectiveness and dramatic sincerity not incapable of achieving in combination his desired result, he wrote like a master.