Part 7 — SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

BILLINGTON.

(Print her name in grand capitals, Mr. Compositor)—Billington returned from Italy! My father, who remembered, I suspect, the beautiful woman more than the accomplished singer, determined to hear again her Mandane; and sorely against my will, I rather think to prevent the chance of my doing mischief at home, forced me to go along with him. With listless and unwilling ears I listened to her and Mrs. Mountain, that second best of English singers throughout "Fair Aurora." Gradually, however, and involuntarily, I became pleased, interested, delighted; and when the encored "Soldier tired" was ended, had I but possessed so much Italian, "Sono anch'io Cantatore" would have burst from my lips with as much fervour and devotedness of resolution as the "Sono anch'io Pittore" of the artist. From this moment never had I three shillings and sixpence in my pocket, and either Billington's or Braham's name in the bills of the night, that I was not to be seen planted in the front row of the pit, looking over the leader's book, and taking the only lessons I ever received in music. The opera over, no farce, however laughable, not even the "Turnpike Gate" with Joe Munden's Crack, had the power to detain me in the house.—My time of imitation was arrived, and I sallied forth to alarm watchmen with the last division of the "Soldier tired," affront my friends by saluting them with "Adieu thou dreary pile," or annoy my father with shouting "The Austrian trumpet's loud alarms" at a moment when, with all the fervour of true John Bull anti-gallicanism, he was lamenting over Ulm and Austerlitz; execrating Mack, pitying Francis and Alexander, and cursing the victorious Napoleon by all his gods.—Harmonicon, No. 41.

SUFFICING REASONS FOR SHAKING.

At a charity concert, given some time since in the sister island, one of the reverend directors, or stewards, was shocked at a long shake made by a juvenile chorister in the passage "and they were sore afraid" in the Messiah, and remonstrated with the boy's instructor on the impropriety of such an ornament to such words.

"And is it in regard to the shake you'd be spaking, sir?" replied the master. "Sure and if ye were sore afraid yourself, would not ye be shaking? Ay, I'll be your bail that you would, and shaking in your shoes too! Plase to leave me and my pupil alone: many a one will be coming to-morrow twenty and thirty miles, every inch of it, to hear Master —— sing, that would not step out twenty yards to hear you prache."—Ibid.

CALCULATING NOTES.—PAGANINI.

Stephen Storace had a remarkably good head for figures. When a boy, his passion for calculation was beyond all belief. Michael Kelly says, he has been known to multiply four figures by four figures, by memory, in three minutes. When young, Kelly tells us, Storace was so astonished that fifty guineas should be paid for singing a song, that he counted the notes in it, and calculated the amount of each at 4s. 10d.

This passion for calculating the value of notes (musical ones) has seized a Parisian dilettante, who, according to the Furet de Londres, has been fixing the price of every note and rest in certain pieces played by Paganini recently, at a concert given at the Opera at Paris, which produced him 16,500 francs. The following is the result:—He performed, during the evening, three pieces, each occupying five pages of music, of about 91 bars to the page. The fifteen pages thus contained 1,365 bars, by which the 16,500 francs are to be divided. The quotient will be 12 francs for each bar, or the proportions will be as follows:—For a semibreve, 12f.; a minim 6f.; a crotchet, 3f.; a quaver, 1f. 50c.; a semiquaver, 15 sous; a demisemiquaver, 7-1/2 sous. And, on the other hand, for a minim rest, 6f.; a crotchet rest, 3f.; &c. There would still remain out of the 16,500 francs, 420, which is exactly the price of such a violin as the Conservatory awards as a prize to its most distinguished pupils.

All this may be play to Paganini, but destruction to less fortunate musicians, for he swallows up all that would otherwise be distributed among many. An English violinist must work many long laborious days and nights before he can scrape together six hundred and eighty-seven pounds sterling—the sum, it seems, which the lucky Italian gets by a single concert!—Ibid.