stage.  In England it is now frequently sung as an oratorio.  It is on this remarkable work that Mehul’s lasting reputation as a composer rests outside of his own nation.  The construction of the opera of “Joseph” is characterized by admirable symmetry of form, dramatic power, and majesty of the choral and concerted passages, while the sustained beauty of the orchestration is such as to challenge comparison with the greatest works of his contemporaries.  Such at least is the verdict of Fetis, who was by no means inclined to be over-indulgent in criticising Mehul.  The fault in this opera, as in all of Mehul’s works, appears to have been a lack of bright and graceful melody, though in the modern tendencies of music this defect is rapidly being elevated into a virtue.

The last eight years of Mehul’s life were depressed by melancholy and suffering, proceeding from pulmonary disease.  He resigned his place in the Conservatory, and retired to a pleasant little estate near Paris, where he devoted himself to raising flowers, and found some solace in the society of his musical friends and former pupils, who were assiduous in their attentions.  Finally becoming dangerously ill, he went to the island of Hyeres to find a more genial climate.  But here he pined for Paris and the old companionships, and suffered more perhaps by fretting for the intellectual cheer of his old life than he gained by balmy air and sunshine.  He writes to one of his friends after a short stay at Hyeres:  “I have broken up all my habits; I am deprived of all my old friends; I am alone at the end of the world, surrounded by people whose language I scarcely understand; and all this sacrifice to obtain a little more sun.  The air which best agrees with me is that which I breathe among you.”  He returned to Paris for a few weeks only, to breathe his last on October 18, 1817, aged fifty-four.

Mehul was a high-minded and benevolent man, wrapped up in his art, and singularly childlike in the practical affairs of life.  Abhorring intrigue, he was above all petty jealousies, and even sacrificed the situation of chapel-master under Napoleon, because he believed it should have been given to the greatest of his rivals, Cherubini.  When he died Paris recognized his goodness as a man as well as greatness as a musician by a touching and spontaneous expression of grief, and funeral honors were given him throughout Europe.  In 1822 his statue was crowned on the stage of the Grand Opera, at a performance of his “Valentine de Rohan.”  Notwithstanding his early death, he composed forty-two operas, and modern musicians and critics give him a notable place among those who were prominent in building up a national stage.  A pupil and disciple of Gluck, a cordial co-worker with Cherubini, he contributed largely to the glory of French music, not only by his genius as a composer, but by his important labors in the reorganization of the Conservatory, that nursery which has fed so much of the highest musical talent of the world.