It is impossible to forget the odd events of this season, by which the ruin of Italian Opera, in the Haymarket, was pushed a substantial step forward. There was great apparent bustle—small real result.

Three new operas were produced.—The worthiest of these was Signor Costa's “Don Carlos” which opera had, nevertheless, not the good fortune to please the public.—Everyone knows the honours paid to a prophet in his own country; but there may have been other reasons why a work, so conscientiously written in the Italian style, was denied a place on the stage.—Elsewhere, the general possibility of any great conductor being a great composer, has been considered. An inventor must have the strength of a Hercules, and the self-abstraction of a Simon Stylites, who, having dealt with the inventions of others incessantly, can give to his own fantasies and creations any remarkable individuality and freshness.—Then, the story of “Don Carlos” is a singularly gloomy and painful one for an opera-book. The contriver of words and situations for music has no power of redeeming the oppressive sorrow of its incidents—as a Schiller could do for the spoken drama, by the elevated nobility of his De Posa.—Divested of subtleties of character, the play becomes a strained melodrama, without any redeeming novelty of situation.