HOW SONTAG SINGS. BY HECTOR BERLIOZ.

IN these days, when music has become one of the necessities of civilized life, each party and each clique has its own particular favorite, and denies even common justice to those artists, who are not members of that camaraderie which Mr. Scribe has so cleverly portrayed in his witty play. In that respect Madame Sontag has been extremely fortunate; criticism has handled her more tenderly, and she had to suffer less than any other singer from the venom of party spirit, from the simple reason, that she united all the qualities—although not in an equal degree—all like to find in an artist: sweetness never surpassed, agility almost fabulous, expression, and the most perfect intonation. On she carols, higher and higher, like a lark at "heaven's gate," so soft, so clear, so wonderfully distinct that, like the silver bell from the altar, it is heard through the pealing organ. But her principal merit, in our eyes, is the absence of 'rant'—the substitute of genius—in any shape whatever. She always SINGS, and does not depend on mere strength of lungs—erroneously called "power." She never strains her delicate organ—that sweet instrument so susceptible of every shade of expression. How fortunate for our young singers that, like the nuns in Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable, she left the tomb of the seven ancestors, bestowed by the King of Prussia upon the Countess de Rossi, to teach them the wide difference between singing and screaming, and to show how we all, during the last ten years, have been listening to and adoring false prophets.