Parepa has the next number, and it is her favorite number--the "Inflammatus" from the Stabat Mater. Her voice has now a test such as it has never had before; for in the last few measures she has to sing against the full choral accompaniment of ten thousand voices, the thousand instruments, and the organ. She passes through the ordeal bravely. In the most distant part of the house you can hear her voice. The sustaining of the upper C and the trills were superbly done; and as she closed, her sustained high tones were as pure and as beautiful as those of a bird singing in the distance. It was a grand triumph for her, and the audience evidently regarded it in the same manner, for they gave her a very hearty and unmistakable _encore_, to which she replied with a repetition of the same. The absolute purity of her voice was never better tested than upon this occasion. Verdi should have been present to have heard his Anvil Chorus performed. He is pre-eminently the great apostle of noise, and ten thousand voices, one thousand instruments, one hundred anvils--pounded by two hundred stalwart firemen in perfect time--and a battery of artillery, adding to the din and marking the time without a break, could not but have delighted him. The effect was simply indescribable. The aggregate of sound was gigantic. The firemen had been well trained, without the orchestra, by Mr. Gilmore himself, and, although the whole affair was more or less sensational and noisy, the effect was very stirring, and the audience insisted upon an _encore_. Oliver Wendell Holmes' Hymn, set to the music of Keller's "American Hymn;" the overture to "William Tell," which was deliciously given; the Coronation March from the "Prophet," and the national air, "America," completed this remarkable performance. There were probably few among unprejudiced persons who did not anticipate a musical failure upon this occasion. Many considered it a piece of Boston braggadocio, and others a musical experiment, in which all the chances were unfavorable. The result, however, has proved just the reverse. With the exception, here and there, of slight mistakes, in which some instruments got out of time and occasioned variations which were so trifling that they did not interfere with the effect, the whole affair was a musical success. * * * * * June 16, 1869.