O charming Adelina! How sweet is thy _Amina_ How bewitching thy _Zerlina_! How seldom has there been a More tunable _Norina_! And have I ever seen a More enjoyable _Rosina_? But to tell the praise I mean a- -Las! there should have been a Score more rhymes to Adelina. _Punch_ said what he could in 1861 of two forgotten operas--Balfe's _Puritan's Daughter_, with Santley in the cast, and Benedict's _Lily of Killarney_, a tertiary deposit from _The Collegians_--but found more congenial occupation in the spring of 1862 in levelling the shafts of ineffectual, because uninstructed, ridicule against Wagner:-- LE VERITABLE "OPERA COMIQUE" We read that Herr Wagner is about to compose a comic opera, music and words. We agree with our facetious contemporary, _The Musical World_,[30] that we never heard an opera of Wagner's yet that was not more, or less, comic.... As this gentleman's music is said to belong to "The Future"--and certainly as a Present it is not worth having--we suppose he generally gets it executed by the celebrated Band of "Hope." [Footnote 30: _The Musical World_ was edited by J. W. Davison, the musical critic of _The Times_, a well-equipped musician, an unflinching champion of Mendelssohn and a bitter and persistent disparager of Wagner and Schumann.] [Sidenote: _Wagner and Gounod_] A KING WITH A STRANGE TASTE FOR MUSIC Herr Wagner, the great composer, "for the future" (A.D. 1962), has received sharp orders from the King of Saxony to return home instantly. Is the King jealous that other parts of the Continent should have so much of the services of his Kapellmeister, and he comparatively so little? He probably wishes to have Wagner all to himself. Far from quarrelling with the desired monopoly, in the cause of music we heartily rejoice at it. The royal edict will have the effect of narrowing the evil of contaminating compositions. It is tantamount to a musical quarantine. Travellers must not venture too near, or else they may be infected with one of his malignant airs, which are not so catching, perhaps, as they are lowering, leaving a fearful sense of depression behind them. Henceforth, the flights of _The Flying Dutchman_ will be restricted to one kingdom instead of half a dozen. We hope Wagner will be confined to Dresden all his life. Our Philharmonic will gain from his imprisonment. It will run no further risk of being nearly knocked on the head from another blow of his erratic baton. The chief operatic attractions of 1863 are set forth in an excellent mock-Virgilian Eclogue in which the two rival impresarios, Gye and Mapleson, figure as Damoetas and Menalcas and _Punch_ as Palaemon. Patti's popularity is attested in the couplet:-- My little Patti all the world must own The nicest little party ever known. [Illustration: SIC VOS NON VOBIS