silent. The whole of last month we saw the sun but two or three days,
the sky being almost continually covered with a gloomy fog. England and
Germany seem to have exchanged climates this year, for in the former
country we had delightfully clear weather.

I have seen the banker Rothschild several times driving about the city.
This one--Anselmo, the most celebrated of the brothers--holds a mortgage
on the city of Jerusalem. He rides about in style, with officers
attending his carriage. He is a little bald-headed man, with marked
Jewish features, and is said not to deceive his looks. At any rate, his
reputation is none of the best, either with Jews or Christians. A
caricature was published some time ago, in which he is represented as
giving a beggar woman by the way-side, a kreutzer--the smallest German
coin. She is made to exclaim, "God reward you, a thousand fold!" He
immediately replies, after reckoning up in his head: "How much have I
then?--sixteen florins and forty kreutzers!"

I have lately heard one of the most perfectly beautiful creations that
ever emanated from the soul of genius--the opera of Fidelio. I have
caught faint glimpses of that rich world of fancy and feeling, to which
music is the golden door. Surrendering myself to the grasp of
Beethoven's powerful conception, I read in sounds far more expressive
than words, the almost despairing agony of the strong-hearted, but
still tender and womanly Fidelio--the ecstatic joy of the wasted
prisoner, when he rose from his hard couch in the dungeon, seeming to
fuel, in his maniac brain, the presentiment of a bright being who would
come to unbind his chains--and. the sobbing and wailing, almost-human,
which came from the orchestra, when they dug his grave, by the dim
lantern's light. When it was done, the murderer stole into the dungeon,
to gloat on the agonies of his victim, ere he gave the death-blow. Then,