decorous female, rudely shaken by the French Revolution, and doomed to final annihilation in the pages of Georges Sand. But in Russia, where the emancipation of women was of later date, this virtuous and victimised personage lingered on into the nineteenth century, and served as a foil to the Byronic and misanthropical heroes of Poushkin and Lermontov. The music of _Eugene Oniegin_ is the child of Tchaikovsky's fancy, born of his passing love for the image of Tatiana, and partaking of her nature--never rising to great heights of passion, nor touching depths of tragic despair, tinged throughout by those moods of romantic melancholy and exquisitely tender sentiment which the composer and his heroine share in common. The opera was first performed by the students of the Moscow Conservatoire in March, 1879. Perhaps the circumstances were not altogether favourable to its success; for although the composer's friends were unanimous in their praise, the public did not at first show extraordinary enthusiasm. Apart from the fact that the subject probably struck them as daringly unconventional and lacking in sensational developments, a certain section of purists were shocked at Poushkin's _chef-d'oeuvre_ being mutilated for the purposes of a libretto, and resented the appearance of the almost canonized figure of Tatiana upon the stage. Gradually, however, _Eugene Oniegin_ acquired a complete sway over the public taste and its serious rivals became few in number. There are signs, however, that its popularity is on the wane.