the instrument, and this ought to make us extremely cautious of advancing an opinion, especially a derogatory one, the first time of hearing a piece. Besides, I am apt to think that I expected too much,-a fault which surely may be forgiven to any one in the least conversant with this master's compositions. Of the merits of the Donna, of course, there can be but one opinion: but as to the performers, I really think I am liberal in the admission, when I say that there were not above one or two good second-rate singers in the whole gaudy troop, male or female; and Don Roderick himself could barely pass muster. To complete the whole, the costume of the Highlanders was a barbarous outrage; making them look more like a banditti of Spanish guerillas, than a warlike clan of our kilted mountaineers.

At the house of the Countess Beljoyoso met to-day the celebrated Madame Grassini, who I thought had for many long years been enjoying the company of the harmonious sisters in another world. She is in excellent health

and spirits, and intends visiting England in a short time, once more to delight, perhaps rather to astonish us. She says Catalani has lost many of her high notes, but obtained a complement in exchange of low. I should much doubt their being an equivalent. The revolution in Grassini is the reverse. Instead of the delightful contralto, which in years past,

"As she sung, would have the prison'd soul,
And lap it in Elysium,"

her voice is now a mezzo soprano. How far the alteration may be for the better, I have not heard: but whatever it is, I should think the raciness of tone cannot be much improved by being fifty years in bottle. She seems a most charming person, and her manners of the first order of captivation.

From all I can hear and learn, I augur nothing but mischief, should M. Pyronnet's projet for trammelling the press be suffered to pass. If public opinion has not vent through this channel, it must, sooner or later, find another, and one probably the Government may like as

little. True it is, that before the revolution the nation long and patiently endured the agonies of suppressed opinion; but let us bear in mind how long they had been strangers to any thing like freedom. The experiment of open, manful remonstrance would have been a fearful venture, while a lettre de cachet hung over their heads, and they were ignorant of their strength. The insane abettors of this bill appear to have forgotten that they live in the nineteenth, not in the sixteenth century. The benefit of history is thrown away upon them. It is thrown away upon them that England has experimentally proved that the liberty of the press is the best bulwark of our religion and constitution, by enlightening men to appreciate the value of both. It seems lost upon them too, that there is no possible mode of getting at an acquaintance with the true interests of the governed, but through the free publication of opinion: or if they do know these things, they force us into the conclusion that their object is in reality not the suppression of the licentiousness of the press, as they would have it believed, but a

step towards the restoration of absolute government. But if they may justly stifle the publication of printed opinions, then I ask, why not spoken opinions? It is in truth and in effect but one step from putting down the printer to gagging the talker. To speak of a free representation of the people, without allowing the people the power of freely expressing their sentiments, is a solecism in language and in legislation. A Frenchman asked me to-day why there should not be a check upon aristo- cratic licentiousness as well as popular licentiousness. "Human nature being the same in both, is there," said he, "any good reason why there should not be a mutual guarantee for the good behaviour of both? The history of your own country is a pregnant proof of the attachment which a free press begets for a free constitution, which you know, said he, spite of the most frightful commotions and rudest shocks, always righted again mainly, if not solely, through its instrumentality." So fully do I coincide with this view of the subject, that I am convinced, if her navigators do not look

sharp, the French vessel of state will soon be on her beam ends. Is it consistent with what : we know of ourselves, that we are to be made better men or better subjects for being obliged to suppress the sentiments which truth and conviction leave us no option to embrace or reject; and that when aggrieved, we are to be denied the last consolation of the miserable,that of telling our grievances to those who have the power to redress them? Let a pressrestrictor only try the experiment in his own family. If he be a father, let him try it with his children, and see whether even the instinctive force of filial reverence would be disposed tamely to submit to a total surrender of the liberty of complaining in any point where they might feel their interests tyrannically invaded. It is said, au pis aller, if the minister cannot manage to carry his projet by any other means, fair or foul, he has advised the King to create sixty new peers. Better, or I am far astray in my French politics,-better Charles X. you had never left your pension in Holyrood House.

One of the least equivocal signs of the times