This failure did not deter Arne's successors from freely following their own operatic bent, in the earlier and less ambitious style. The agreeable and distinctive national talent of Dibdin, Arnold, Linley, Shield, Horace, Hook, Braham and many others found expression in a host of musically set plays, which hugely delighted the public. English musicians received encouragement and responded to it. The 1809 English Opera House produced a quantity of works, and at the same time Drury Lane and Covent Garden offered a field of activity to Bishop, who was a born operatic composer of charming and original gifts. To this period belongs Balfe, who may be said to mark its culmination. The _Siege of Rochelle_, his first opera, was brought out at Drury Lane in 1835, and the _Bohemian Girl_, his most successful one, in 1843 at the same theatre. This opera has been before the public for nearly sixty years, and is still enjoying the undiminished favour of popular audiences. Wallace's _Maritana_, which belongs to the same period, is also very much alive to this day. Barnett's _Mountain Sylph_ (1834) and Loder's _Night Dancers_ (1846) met with as much success and lasted as long as four out of five contemporary Italian works, and they were only amongst the most prominent of a number of native operas, called forth in this period of sunshine and received with appreciation. This period passed away, and has not been renewed. The promise held out by Carl Rosa, an _impressario_ of enlightenment and enterprise, almost amounting to genius, was baulked by his premature death, and the patriotic effort embodied, in the theatre which is now the Palace Music Hall ended in worse than failure. That well-meant but disastrous venture was the heaviest blow that English opera has ever received, for it cast the shadow of hopelessness over the whole enterprise in the eyes of the public in general and the theatrical and musical world in particular. Naturally perhaps, but most unjustly.