Fashion, in the folly of its excess, has not often been seen to cut so extravagant a figure as on the occasion of the associated performances in private by Giardini and Mingotti, during the “high and palmy state” of their credit. The absolutism of Mrs. Fox Lane (afterwards Lady Bingley) over the fashionable world, as the enthusiastic patroness of these two artists, is a thing that satire might feast on. Rank, wealth, manhood, and beauty, prostrate before the domination of this “pollens matrona,” were content (lest, forsooth! they should have “argued themselves unknown”) to pay tax and tribute to her two favourites, and take a passport to the notice of “the town,” in the shape of a benefit-ticket. At such scenes, it is not using too strong a figure to say that Folly must have clapped her hands, displayed her broadest grin, and given an extra jingle to the bells on her cap. To all who reflect, it scarcely needs to be observed that the false raptures and artificial stimulus, belonging to a system like this, are nearly as injurious as they are absurd; that to pamper thus the artist, is not only to spoil him, but to injure the interests of the art, by making it the object of popular ridicule or disgust. The contrast afforded by the close of Giardini’s career with the brilliancy of its middle course, makes one think of Johnson’s bitter association of “the patron and the jail.” Those were, truly, the days when patronage was a thing of rank luxuriance, that sometimes overgrew and choked the flowers of genius to which it fastened itself. The case is now, happily, become somewhat different—the free and fostering breath of general opinion being the air in which talent has learned to seek and attain its full growth; and a more limited resort being had to the forcing influence of the aristocratic temperature.[30] The losses that Giardini had sustained on that ready road to ruin, the Italian Opera, drove him back to the resources of his own particular talent; and he entered upon the occupation of teaching in families of rank and fashion, at the same time continuing unrivalled as a leader, a solo-player, and a composer for his favourite instrument. Mr. Gardiner, of Leicester, has made the following record concerning him, in his “_Music and Friends_,” on the occasion of a concert at the above town, in 1774:—“There I heard the full and prolonged tones of Giardini’s violin. He played a concerto, in which he introduced the then popular air “Come, haste to the wedding,” which moved the audience to a state of ecstacy, but now would disgust every one by its vulgarity. He was a fine-figured man, superbly dressed in green and gold; the breadth of the lace upon his coat, with the three large gold buttons on the sleeve, made a rich appearance, which still glitters on my imagination.”