"Il ne faut pas faire de la musique comme celle-là," Lesueur had said to Berlioz after having listened to the C Minor Symphony; "Soyez tranquille, cher maître, on n'en fera pas beaucoup," had been the answer vouchsafed by the future author of "La Damnation de Faust." In the meanwhile Boiëldieu never lost the opportunity of playing through Rossini's operas to his pupils, and descanting upon their merits. It is indeed difficult to account for the extraordinary influence exercised by Rossini over his contemporaries. That his "facile" melodies should have proved agreeable to the general public, and his florid ornamentations grateful to the singers, "passe encore." But that an entire generation of composers should have been so fascinated by the sham glitter of his brilliant though shallow compositions as to follow his methods in so faithful a manner, is incomprehensible. It is eminently to the credit of French taste that "Guillaume Tell," his only really great work of serious import, should have been written for the Paris Grand Opéra. Entirely devoid of artistic conscience or of any of those lofty aspirations towards the ideal that stamp the true artist, be his name Bach or Beethoven, Schubert or Schumann, Berlioz or Wagner, Rossini deliberately squandered his genius. Success seems to have been his only object, and this once acquired he was content to idle away the remainder of a long existence, sublimely unconscious of the great musical upheaval that was being accomplished by genuine workers in the cause of art. What can we think of a composer who could employ the same overture to precede operas so widely different in regard to their subject-matter as "Elisabetta, Regina d'Inghilterra" and "Il Barbiere"? What of the musician who thought that a brilliant martial strain was the right musical interpretation of the sublime and poignant words expressive of Mary at the foot of the Cross? "Cujus animam gementem, contristantem et dolentem"; words of indescribable sadness and depth; a mother mourning her Divine Son; a theme unexampled in point of pathos and emotion, set to a melody that would be in its proper place in some pageant descriptive of the triumphal entry of a conqueror into a city!