The very maidservants at that period understood music. Pepys speaks of a servant whom he and his wife took into their household, a poor, wretched girl, without proper clothing, but with a decided talent for singing, apparent even through a voice described by the diarist as furred for want of use. This was the fourth maid in the course of less than ten years whom Pepys praises for musical ability; and there was also the boy who was in the habit of playing his lute in bed at four in the morning, a habit that most employers would object to, but Pepys saw in it only occasion for praise. The seventeenth century marks an era in our musical history, because it witnessed the first attempts at opera by English composers. Matthew Lock’s opera, _Psyche_, produced in 1673, was the first English composition of this class. Henry Purcell, when he was only about seventeen, wrote _Dido and Æneas_. It was performed in 1677. Now, as Madame Raymond Ritter has said-- “Woman’s practical career as a musician only began with the invention of the opera about 1600. It was not until her superiority as an actress and a singer had been undeniably and triumphantly established on the stage that she was allowed to resume her musical participation in Church services.”[63] Purcell’s opera had a very modest introduction to the world. It was performed at a girl’s boarding-school, kept in Leicester Fields by Mr. James Priest, a famous dancing-master, who persuaded young Purcell to write the music to the libretto of the drama which had been composed by one Tate at his suggestion. Mr. Priest desired to have something for his pupils to perform, and the exhibition came off with great _éclat_ in the presence of the pupils’ parents and friends. It is a little surprising that any one should have been found daring enough to carry out so startling an idea at a girls’ school, and it seems odd that Mr. Priest should have been the proprietor of such an establishment. The musical history of England affords little that is encouraging to dwell upon from the middle of the seventeenth century. A great many foreign artists visited this country, but native talent was at a very low ebb. There were no English composers of any note after Purcell, who died at thirty-seven years of age, just when Italian opera was beginning to take root in England. PERIOD III. _LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY._ CHAPTER I. MATRONS AND MAIDS. Artificiality of eighteenth-century life--The _rôle_ of the middle-class woman--Scotch domestic life--The old maid--Admiration of foreigners for English women--English dress--Public morals--Contrast between town and country life--A country lady in London--Racquets, routs, and drums--Education of girls--The boarding-school--Habits and manners of the middle class--Le Blanc’s opinion of the English.