at the ceremony. The procession was composed of the numerous clergy of
Bergamo, the most illustrious members of the community and its environs,
and of the civic guard of the town and the suburbs. The discharge of
musketry, mingled with the light of three or four thousand torches,
presented a fine effect; the whole was enhanced by the presence of
three military bands and the most propitious weather it was possible to
behold. The young gentlemen of Bergamo insisted on bearing the remains
of their illustrious fellow-townsman, although the cemetery was a league
and a half from the town. The road was crowded its whole length by
people who came from the surrounding country to witness the procession;
and to give due praise to the inhabitants of Bergamo, never, hitherto,
had such great honors been bestowed upon any member of that city."


III.

The future author of "Norma" and "La Sonnambula," Bellini, took his
first lessons in music from his father, an organist at Catania.*

* Bellini was born in 1802, nine years after his
contemporary and rival, Donizetti, and died in 1835,
thirteen years before.

He was sent to the Naples Conservatory by the generosity of a noble
patron, and there was the fellow-pupil of Mercadante, a composer who
blazed into a temporary lustre which threatened to outshine his fellows,
but is now forgotten except by the antiquarian and the lover of church
music. Bellini's early works, for he composed three before he was
twenty, so pleased Barbaja, the manager of the San Carlo and La Scala,
that he intrusted the youth with the libretto of "Il Pirata," to be