from Anna.  When the time comes for payment, Anna produces the treasure which had been concealed in the statue, and, still in the disguise of the White Lady, discovers to him the secret of his birth during the exile of his parents.  Gaveston approaches the spectre and tears off her veil, revealing Anna, his ward.  Moved by the zeal and fidelity of his father’s protegee, George offers her his hand, which, after some maidenly scruples, she accepts.

The opera is full of beautiful songs, many of them Scotch in character.  In the first act the opening song of George ("Ah, what Pleasure a Soldier to be!”) is very poetical in its sentiment.  It also contains the characteristic ballad of the White Lady, with choral responses ("Where yon Trees your Eye discovers"), and an exquisitely graceful trio in the finale ("Heavens! what do I hear?").  The second act opens with a very plaintive romanza ("Poor Margaret, spin away!"), sung by Margaret, Anna’s old nurse, at her spinning-wheel, as she thinks of the absent Laird, followed in the fifth scene by a beautiful cavatina for tenor ("Come, O Gentle Lady").  In the seventh scene is a charming duet ("From these Halls"), and the act closes with an ensemble for seven voices and chorus, which has hardly been excelled in ingenuity of treatment.  The third act opens with a charmingly sentimental aria for Anna ("With what delight I behold"), followed in the third scene by a stirring chorus of mountaineers, leading up to “the lay ever sung by the Clan of Avenel,”—­the familiar old ballad, “Robin Adair,” which loses a little of its local color under French treatment, but gains an added grace.  It is stated on good authority that two of Boieldieu’s pupils, Adolph Adam and Labarre, assisted him in the work, and that the lovely overture was written in one evening,—­Boieldieu taking the andante and the two others the remaining movements.  Though a little old-fashioned in some of its phrasing, the opera still retains its freshness and beautiful sentiment.  Its popularity is best evinced by the fact that up to June, 1875, it had been given 1340 times at the theatre where it was first produced.

BOITO.

Arrigo Boito was born in 1840, and received his musical education in the Conservatory at Milan, where he studied for nine years.  In 1866 he became a musical critic for several Italian papers, and about the same time wrote several poems of more than ordinary merit.  Both in literature and music his taste was diversified; and he combined the two talents in a remarkable degree in his opera of “Mephistopheles,” the only work by which he is known to the musical world at large.  He studied Goethe profoundly; and the notes which he has appended to the score show a most intimate knowledge of the Faust legend.  His text is in one sense polyglot, as he has made use of portions of Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus,” as well as excerpts from Blaze de Bury, Lenau, Widmann,