The next number on the programme was the recitative and aria, "_Non piu di fiori_," from Mozart's "La Clemenza di Tito," for Miss Adelaide Phillipps, and as that lady came forward she was received with very hearty applause, but not with that cordiality of greeting I had expected to witness from a Boston audience to a Boston singer. Her selection was a most unfortunate one. It was too florid in character and marred the unity of the oratorio nature of the performance. It would have been in much better taste also to have selected something in English than in Italian. It is but simple truth also to say that her singing was no better than her taste in selection. She was not able to cope with the obstacles of the house and the audience. But one tone of her voice was thoroughly distinct at the rear of the hall. Her singing, at a distance, was so very expressionless that it fell utterly cold and flat, and people talked and turned uneasily in their seats. And perhaps it was worse than all else that she did not sing true, and at one time was almost hopelessly floating along upon a discord. Every advantage was afforded her, for only a handful of instruments accompanied her, and these were toned down to _pianissimo_. Her fine chest voice, which is so effective on the operatic stage, was almost inaudible beyond the centre of the hall. A flutter of applause ran over the audience when she had finished, and then came Mendelssohn's magnificent chorus from "Elijah"--"He watching over Israel." Zerrahn leaves the orchestra in the hand of another conductor, and takes his place in the centre of the vast chorus with baton in hand. There must be no mistake made in Felix Mendelssohn's music. Its ineffable beauty must not be marred by a single spot or flaw. And it was not. The two conductors' batons moved as if they were in the hands of one, and, from first to last, the chorus and orchestra were together in perfect time and with the most tender regard for light and shade. I could not help wishing that Felix Mendelssohn himself could have been there. How small and feeble would the 500 Birmingham performers have seemed to him in the presence of this vast multitude! How his great heart would have rejoiced within him to have heard this chorus, so full of dignity, and piety, and beauty, sung by such a massing of voices and instruments! What letters he would have written to his sister! To have heard that performance was the event of a lifetime, for it may never be done again. Had I been Carl Zerrahn, it seems to me, I should have been the happiest man in the world. If spirits are allowed to visit this lower world, then certainly the spirit of Mendelssohn must have been in that hall, and must have guided and inspired that baton, for it held the singers, organ and instruments together like magic, and when it had made its last beat, the audience broke out into loud and long continued applause.