ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS, CONSISTING OF TALES, ROMANCES, ANECDOTES,

AND POETRY.

REMINISCENCES OF THE OPERA.

BY ELIZABETH YOUATT.

"Just God!

How thou dost rack us by the very idols We make unto ourselves!"

GEORGE STEPHENS.

About the fashionable hour for morning calls and morning concerts, two foreigners might have been seen to saunter carelessly from the door of the Opera House in the direction of the Haymarket. Both were well dressed, and wore a profusion of jewelry, as most foreigners do; and the younger strikingly handsome. His complexion was a clear olive, relieved by a bright rich colour; his eyes dark and passionate; the luxuriance of his black clustering hair, and a pair of exquisite mustaches completing his attractions. The ladies looked first at him, and then at each other, and scarcely waited for him to be out of hearing to exclaim, quite involuntary as it were, "What a beauty!" While the men sneered at his long hair, and called him "a puppy!"

Those who had any curiosity to know the name of the young foreigner, might have seen it placarded up in conspicuous characters all along the Opera Colonnade; and there was scarcely a respectable printseller at the west end but could have furnished them with a full-length portrait of their idol-it was Agnolo Zavarisi, the present star and wonder of the fashionable world! No concert was considered worth going to unless he sung. Friends when they met at each others' houses, or strangers introduced to you at a public party, were sure to begin the conversation by asking if you had heard Zavarisi. And if between the pauses of a quadrille the exclamations of "divine !" "exquisite!" "inimitable!" fell at intervals upon the ear, you might make up your mind at once of

whom they were talking. It was astonishing the sums which he nightly received, and, still more so, the facility with which they were spent ; but then Zavarisi was young and extravagant, and so proverbially generous, that few of his poorer professional brethren ever applied to him in vain; the consequence of which was, that their applications became more and more frequent without his having the heart to put a stop to them. It is equally difficult for the liberal spirited to refuse, as for the niggardly to bestow; and both extremes are dangerous.

The two friends had scarcely turned out of Coventry-street in the direction of Leicester-square, in the neighbourhood of which Zavarisi resided, when their attention was attracted by a group of street musicians, consisting of a woman and five children, all singing, in most admired confusion, some ballad; the language of which, as far as could be distinguished, appeared touchingly simple and full of natural pathos. It was something about a blackbird and a thrush singing on a bush; and it might have been observed that every time the woman reached the bush, her children, less active, could never manage to pass the blackbird, but only elevated their little shrill voices in a vain effort at pursuit.

"Diavolo !" exclaimed the elder of the two foreigners, putting his hands before his ears; is this the national music of the English?"

Zavarisi laughed.

"Perhaps," said he, after a pause, in which kindly feeling had chased away all merriment ; perhaps she has no other means of earning bread for those little ones."

The woman's quick glance seemed to interpret his thoughts, and she motioned one of the children who, instead of singing, had lingered behind the rest, apparently weeping bitterly, to approach and receive his offering; while the girl came forward, as if in sullen obedience to the mandate of her companion, and held out her little hand without speaking, until astonished at the value of the gift, she suddenly exclaimed, in perfect English, "What, am I to take all this?"

Zavarisi smiled, and patted her curly head. "What splendid eyes!" said he to his friend, in Italian.

The child coloured, and bounded away to dis