following: "Rossini, the most gifted and spoiled of her sons [speaking
of Italy] sallied forth with an innumerable army of Bacchantic melodies
to conquer the world, the Messiah of joy, the breaker of thought and
sorrow. Europe, by this time, had tired of the empty pomp of French
declamation. It lent but too willing an ear to the new gospel, and
eagerly quaffed the intoxicating potion, which Rossini poured out in
inexhaustible streams." This very well expresses the delight of all the
countries of Europe in music which for a long time almost monopolized
the stage.

The charge of being a mere tune-spinner, the denial of invention, depth,
and character, have been common watchwords in the mouths of critics
wedded to other schools. But Rossini's place in music stands unshaken by
all assaults. The vivacity of his style, the freshness of his melodies,
the richness of his combinations, made all the Italian music that
preceded him pale and colorless. No other writer revels in such luxury
of beauty, and delights the ear with such a succession of delicious
surprises in melody.

Henry Chorley, in his "Thirty Years' Musical Recollections," rebukes the
bigotry which sees nothing good but in its own kind: "I have never been
able to understand why this [referring to the Rossinian richness of
melody] should be contemned as necessarily false and meretricious--why
the poet may not be allowed the benefit of his own period and time--why
a lover of architecture is to be compelled to swear by the _Dom_
at Bamberg, or by the Cathedral at Monreale--that he must abhor and
denounce Michel Angelo's church or the Baths of Diocletian at Rome--why
the person who enjoys 'Il Barbiere' is to be denounced as frivolously
faithless to Mozart's 'Figaro'--and as incapable of comprehending
'Fidelio,' because the last act of 'Otello' and the second of 'Guillaume