warmth kindling warmth, amounted to that display of conscious power which is resistless.  The perfection with which she wrought up certain scenes, such as the “Sonnambula” finale and the mad scene in “Lucia,” judged from the standard of musical style, was not surpassed in any of the dazzling displays of the stage.  She had the finest possible sense of accent, which enabled her to give every phrase its fullest measure.

Groups of notes were divided and expressed by her with all the precision which the best violinists put into their bowing.  The bird-like case with which she executed the most florid, rapid, and difficult music was so securely easy and unfailing as to excite something of the same kind of wonder with which one would watch some matchless display of legerdemain.

Another great musical quality in which she surpassed her contemporaries was her taste and extraordinary facility in ornament.  Always refined and true in style, she showed a variety and brilliancy in her changes and cadenzas which made her the envy of other singers.  In this form of accomplishment she was first among Italians, who, again, are first among the singers of the world.  Every passage was finished to perfection; and, though there were other singers not inferior to her in the use of the shake or the trill, yet in the attack of intervals distant from each other, in the climbing up a series of groups of notes, ascending to the highest in the scale, there was no singer of her own time or since who could compete with her.  Mr. Chorley tells us how convincingly these rare and remarkable merits impressed themselves on him, “when, after a few years’ absence from our stage, Mme. Persiani reappeared in London, how, in comparison with her, her younger successors sounded like so many immature scholars of the second class.”  On her gala nights the spirit and splendor of her execution were daring, triumphant, and irresistible, if we can trust those who heard her in her days of greatness.  Moschcles, in his diary, speaks of the incredible difficulties which she overcame, and compares her performance with that of a violinist, while Mendelssohn, who did not love Italian music or the Italian vocalization, said:  “Well, I do like Mme. Persiani dearly.  She is such a thorough artist, and she sings so earnestly, and there is such a pleasant bitter tone in her voice.”

Donizetti met Mme. Persiani again in Vienna in 1842, and composed for her his charming opera, “Linda di Chamouni,” which, with the exception of the “Favorita” and “Lucia,” is generally admitted to be his best.  In this opera our singer made an impression nearly equal to that in “Lucia,” and it remained afterward a great favorite with her, and one in which she was highly esteemed by the European public.