A strange story is extant, in relation to the closing scene of Lully’s life. His confessor prescribed to him, as the condition of his absolution, that he should commit to the flames his latest opera. Lully, after many excuses, at length acquiesced, and, pointing to a drawer in which the rough draught of _Achille et Polixène_ was deposited, it was taken out and burnt, and the confessor went away satisfied. Lully grew better, and was thought out of danger, when one of the young Princes came to visit him. “What, Baptiste,” says he to him, “have you thrown your _opera_ into the fire? You were a fool for thus giving credit to a gloomy Jansenist, and burning good music.”—“Hush, hush!” answered Lully, in a whisper, “I knew well what I was about—I have another copy of it!” Unhappily, this ill-timed pleasantry was followed by a relapse; and the prospect of inevitable death threw him into such pangs of remorse, that he submitted to be laid on a heap of ashes, with a cord round his neck; and, in this situation, he expressed a deep sense of his late transgression. On being replaced in his bed, he became more composed, and (as the relation goes) he expired singing, to one of his own airs, the emphatic words, “Il faut mourir, pécheur, il faut mourir!” The high estimation which the once _sous-marmiton_, and afterwards regenerator of the music of France, had enjoyed, enabled him to amass considerable money. In natural disposition, he was gay and cheerful; and, although he was rather thick and short in person, somewhat rude in speech, and little able to shape his manners to the formal refinements of the French Court, he was not without a certain dignity, which intellect succeeds in conferring. The musical style of Lully was characterized by vivacity and originality; by virtue of which qualities, his compositions, chiefly operas, and other dramatic entertainments, kept possession of the French stage till the middle of the last century, when Rameau came into vogue. Lully is considered to have invented the _overture_, or at least to have given to it its most distinctive marks of character. He composed _symphonies for violins_, in three parts; but these are not to be met with in print. If we may judge of the old French violin-players, _en masse_, from the kind of business assigned to them by Lully, in his operas, we must draw a very moderate conclusion as to their proficiency; or, to borrow the words of Dr. Burney, we must regard them as “musicians not likely, by their abilities, to continue the miraculous powers ascribed to Orpheus and Amphion.” Even for half a century after Lully’s time, the French progress on the instrument appears to have been far from considerable. Their performers had as yet borrowed but little of the true spirit of their great Italian originals; nor do we come to any very important name among them until that of