with no support but a simple bass, in strong contrast to the rich accompaniment elsewhere employed? His good breeding is as characteristic of him as his love of enjoyment, and is shown at his first entrance in his behaviour towards Donna Anna and the Commendatore. There is no roughness in his struggle with her, and he would fain avoid violence, as also in the combat with her father; not until his honour as a cavalier has been touched to the quick does he draw his sword, and the result of the duel causes him genuine emotion. True, his nobler impulses are not of long duration; he is destitute of generosity or nobility of mind, and his highest quality is mere brute courage. In the churchyard scene, when his arrogance has brought matters to a crisis, and Leporello has made his terrified exit, the horror of his situation rouses all Don Giovanni's determination, and he passes the bounds of foolhardiness in his defiance of the spectre. This scene, however, in which the defiance of a mortal is forced to yield to the higher powers, is a necessary sequel to the preceding one with Elvira, in which the moral conflict has just been fought out. Its pathos redeems it from burlesque, and spreads an impression of horror which overmasters human reason. Mozart's success in the combination of these qualities into a whole of harmonious beauty has already been admired by us as the work of a genius. Gracious and winning manners and overflowing strength and animal spirits, combined with the refinement of good birth and breeding and the frankness of a jovial temperament, produce a picture of a man richly endowed by nature, but requiring to bend to moral restraint before he can be called great or noble. He attracts liking, he rouses sympathy, but he is doomed to final overthrow. Donna Anna,[170] as the representative of intellectual elevation and moral purity, is placed in strong contrast to this seductive being, who attracts and degrades all with whom he comes in contact. She triumphs over him from the first, {DON GIOVANNI.} (198) the magic of his presence being powerless to affect her pure spirit. But her maidenly pride resents his unworthy advances; the idea that an insult so great should remain unpunished rouses such passion within her, that she loses sight of all save her just revenge. The music gives a tone of nobility and elevation to her passionate excitement, stamping her at once as the superior nature to which Don Giovanni yields, not only that he may escape recognition, but because he cannot help himself. Her relation to him preserves this tone throughout, and there is no subsequent suggestion of any closer or more personal interest.