Music, it would have been received with tumultuous applause. The singers on this occasion gained to themselves great credit by their conscientious endeavors. They generously offered their services, and sang with a heartiness that showed a warm interest in the work. One of them, at least, Mrs. J. H. Long, would have established her reputation as an accomplished artist, even if she had never appeared in public before. We suppose our readers will agree with us in looking with eager delight to the promise of a national school of music. Every nation must create its own song. The passionate music of Italy electrifies our cooler blood, but it does not adequately express all our feelings nor in any way represent our character. We also find many of the compositions of Germany so purely intellectual that they do not touch us until we have _learned_ to like them. If we ever have a school of music, it will be in harmony with our rapidly developing characteristics. But it must grow up on our own soil; exotics never flourish long under strange skies. We think that many things point to this country as the place where music will achieve new triumphs. We are not bound by old traditions, we have few prejudices to unlearn, and we are able to see merit in more than one school. The same audience that becomes almost intoxicated with the excitement of the Italian opera will listen with the fullest, serenest pleasure to the majestic symphonies of Beethoven or to the sublime choruses of Handel. The devotees of the various European schools have none of this catholicity. A very accomplished Italian musician used frankly to say, that a symphony always put him to sleep; and as for the songs of Franz and other recent German composers, he would rather hear the filing of saws with an accompaniment of wet fingers on a window-pane. The Germans, on the other hand, have an equal contempt for Italian music. For them, Donizetti is melodramatic, Bellini puerile and silly, and even Rossini (who has written as many melodies as any composer, save Mozart) is only fit to compose for hand-organs. The American musical public can and do render to both schools the justice they deny each other,--and this because we appreciate the aim and direction of both. The tendency of modern German music is more and more in what we might call a mathematical direction; the Teutonic listener examines the structure of a movement as he would a geometrical proposition; he notices the connection and dependence of the several parts, and at the end, if he like it, he thinks Q.E.D.; his pleasure is quiet, but sincere. The Italian, on the other hand, makes everything subordinate to feeling; for him the music must sparkle with pleasure, burn with passion, or lighten with rage; borne upon the tide of emotion, the under-current of harmony is a matter of little moment; there may be symmetry of structure, and learning in the treatment of themes; if so, well; if not, their absence is not noticed as an essential defect.