acres are to become the property of a villain, the unfaithful steward of his own family.  Here is a situation full of gloom and sad foreboding.  But Scribe and Boieldieu knew better.  Their hero is a dashing cavalry officer, who makes love to every pretty woman he comes across, the ‘White Lady of Avenel’ among the number.  Yet no one who has witnessed the impersonation of George Brown by the great Roger can have failed to be impressed with the grace and noble gallantry of the character.”

The tune of “Robin Adair,” introduced by Boieldieu and described as “le chant ordinaire de la tribu d’Avenel,” would hardly be recognized by a genuine Scotchman; but what it loses in homely vigor it has gained in sweetness.  The musician’s taste is always gratified in Boieldieu’s two great comic operas by the grace and finish of the instrumentation, and the carefully composed ensembles, while the public is delighted with the charming ballads and songs.  The airs of “La Dame Blanche” are more popular in classic Germany than those of any other opera.  Boieldieu may then be characterized as the composer who carried the French operetta to its highest development, and endowed it in the fullest sense with all the grace, sparkle, dramatic symmetry, and gamesome touch so essentially the heritage of the nation.

Auber’s position in art may be defined as that of the last great representative of French comic opera, the legitimate successor of Boieldieu, whom he surpasses in refinement and brilliancy of individual effects, while he is inferior in simplicity, breadth, and that firm grasp of details which enables the composer to blend all the parts into a perfect whole.  In spite of the fact that “La Muette,” Auber’s greatest opera, is a romantic and serious work, full of bold strokes of genius that astonish no less than they please, he must be held to be essentially a master in the field of operatic comedy.  In the great opera to which allusion has been made the passions of excited public feeling have their fullest sway, and heroic sentiments of love and devotion are expressed in a manner alike grand and original.  The traditional forms of the opera are made to expand with the force of the feeling bursting through them.  But this was the sole flight of Auber into the higher regions of his art, the offspring of the thoroughly revolutionized feeling of the time (1828), which within two years shook Europe with such force.  Aside from this outcome of his Berserker mood, Auber is a charming exponent of the grace, brightness, and piquancy of French society and civilization.  If rarely deep, he is never dull, and no composer has given the world more elegant and graceful melodies of the kind which charm the drawing-room and furnish a good excuse for young-lady pianism.

The following sprightly and judicious estimate of Auber by one of the ablest of modern critics, Henry Chorley, in the main lixes him in his right place: