I complain that French intellect is lowered.

The descent from "Polyeucte" to "Ruy Blas" is great, not so much in the poetry of form as in the elevation of thought; but the descent from "Ruy Blas" to the best drama now produced is out of poetry altogether, and into those flats of prose which give not even the glimpse of a mountain-top.
But now to the opera.

S------ in Norma! The house was crowded, and its enthusiasm as loud as it was genuine.

You tell me that S------ never rivalled Pasta, but certainly her Norma is a great performance.

Her voice has lost less of its freshness than I had been told, and what is lost of it her practised management conceals or carries off.
The Maestro was quite right: I could never vie with her in her own line; but conceited and vain as I may seem even to you in saying so, I feel in my own line that I could command as large an applause,--of course taking into account my brief-lived advantage of youth.