In nothing is the difference between home and foreign arrangements more striking than in the quantity of entertainment deemed fashionable and sufficient. Talk of the English as lukewarm in the matter of public amusements! Where else shall we find audiences willing to be shut up in the strait seats of a theatre, or the cramping benches of an opera pit, from seven o'clock in the evening till an hour past midnight? Where else, frames robust enough to endure, as at our provincial festivals, four hours of oratorio in the morning, and five hours of concert in the evening, with all the intermediate hurries and cares attendant on the pleasure?

I was sitting on the second morning revolving our incessant habits in my mind, and rejoicing in the rationality of a few hours' pause, when Dr. Mendelssohn kindly paid me a visit. There were some MSS. of Sebastian Bach to be inspected ; there was to be organ-playing in the Cathedral: in short, it was to be one of those mornings of musical lounging and luxury, which, as regards real enjoyment of, and insight into, the art, are sometimes worth a score of formal performances. Once again the friendly hospitality must be dwelt upon which included in these choice pleasures a total stranger, without his being allowed for a single instant, to feel himself tolerated or de trop.