PAST AND PRESENT. BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER.

SONTAG! A thousand delightful memories are associated with that name;—memories which it is ever pleasant to recall. Years, years ago we heard her delicious voice, and its beauty never left us. We were present at the few last performances of Sontag before she retired from a world that almost worshipped her, to the joys and honors of private life. We heard her, and we thought that nature had never before endowed a human soul with such exquisite musical organization, or a voice in which heart and melody were so beautifully and intimately blended. We were young then, and our admiration of the beautiful in art was, perhaps, stronger than our judgment; for, in youth, enthusiasm is but rarely under the control of reason; and in good truth the beauty of Mademoiselle Henriette Sontag was something so spirituelle, seemingly, to us, so far elevated above common mortality, that reason was the slave of sensation—a double entrancement of the eye and the ear.

The last part that we saw her in was Agathe in Der Freyschutz. Her singing of the Grand Aria was something perfectly unique, different in conception and execution from any artiste who had preceded her in that celebrated scena. It was a combination of purity and innocence, with earnest and holy love. The conception was full of dramatic force, and the execution was nature without exaggeration or counterfeit. In the Andante, which is a prayer for the safety of her lover, her impassioned, but innocent heartfelt earnestness, was as though a seraph was pleading for an erring mortal. We have seen nor heard anything like it since: it will be to us a life-long memory of delight.

We remember well how loud, indignant, and regretful were the universal exclamations at the presumption of any one man appropriating to himself one in whom the whole civilized world held so dear an interest. But the fiat had gone forth; Love pleaded and Hymen sanctioned the engagement; the world looked on wonderingly, scarcely realizing the extent of the loss. The star that but yesterday beamed in all its radiant effulgence, had suddenly set, and would appear no more. And so Sontag disappeared; a blaze of glory circling that young brow, o'er which scarce twenty summers had set their seal. She disappeared, and by and by a new star arose, and the many worshipped, and the past was, if not forgotten, but rarely remembered.

From time to time, however, the court gossips and the telltales of fashionable life vouchsafed us slight glimpses of the private life of the Countess Rossi—the peerless Sontag. Beloved and admired in that high circle to which her husband's position had called her, it was a theme of general remark with what modest womanly dignity she ornamented the society in which she moved. That same truthful earnestness which, aided by her supernatural gifts, rendered her the idol of the stage, secured her the love and esteem of all who met her in private life.

After many years of undimmed happiness and prosperity, changes take place, and by one of those extraordinary freaks of fortune by which the highest and the lowest reverse their positions, we find the Countess Rossi—the Sontag of our youth—compelled to have recourse to that profession of which she had been so immaculate an ornament, to retrieve a broken fortune and re-erect the altars of her home. No false scruples troubled her; she had a duty to perform, and she set herself with bold and hopeful spirit to the work. How entirely she has succeeded, her career for the two past years bears witness. A few more years of labor and her noble exertions will have procured for her a second large fortune.

And how has time worked upon Sontag? To our mind it has but matured her glorious powers, and added to her loveliness a charm, which is doubled by our interest in and our sympathy for her present position.

Her voice has still that exquisite purity and spirituelle quality which make it a perfect luxury to listen. We have heard louder voices, but never one that fell so soothingly upon the heart—nor one that left us so perfectly satisfied while longing eagerly for more. She was always a thorough and conscientious artiste, and she has not changed. To describe her powers minutely would occupy too much space, but they are all summed up in one short sentence. Sontag sings!