We have thus reviewed the more permanent organization of the courts under Henry II., the first successful restriction of the royal power by the reenacting of old laws in Magna Charta, and finally the emergence of the popular element into political importance in the times of Henry III. The democra tic victory was, it is true, lost with the death of Montfort; but in the succeeding reign the boroughs were again represented in Parliament, so that the principle may be considered as established. Indeed, the annals of those times show us the increasing power, wealth, and importance of the cities, especially of London; and in the various political struggles, success often attended their adhesion to one party or the other. In the century covered by the reigns of these four Plantagenets, the material strength of England made very rapid strides onward. Pauli, whose accuracy on these subjects is quite as remarkable as his appreciation of their value, describes the city of London, during the reign of Henry II., as "far sur passing all other cities in extent and magnificence. The city and its suburbs had, at that time, thirteen cloister and one hundred and twenty-six parish churches. It was surrounded by gardens and luxurious fields, while within everything gave evidence of the good condition of the citizens. The cloisterschools were well attended. At the market, on the river, about the ships, all was busy. There thronged foreign merchants and shipmasters-there might be seen, among the wares of the traders, delicacies and curious fabrics of all sorts. In the streets were seen the caparisoned steed of the knight and the strong-limbed horse of burden. In the handsome houses reigned hospitality and festivity. Nothing but too deep drinking and too frequent conflagrations marred the happiness of the inhabitants. The games were the same as now-cockfights, and horse, and boat-racing; and in the winter, sports on the ice, and playing at ball. The youth were spirited and bold, and sometimes engaged in tumults which cast some shadow over the quiet city-life."

Even the extortions of Richard could not suppress the luxu riously growing commerce of England. Connections sprang up with Netherlands and with Germany. The commercial towns acquired legal rights, for the protection of their trade during the commotions; and in this reign appear, for the first time, a Lord Mayor of London, at the head of twelve Aldermen. İn the reign of Henry III., all the English ports were filled with the most costly delicacies of Europe. This increase of prosperity was manifested in the part which these cities, and espe cially London, was able to take in the stirring political events. In them the democratic element found its first expression.

The city of London, which had espoused the cause of the barons against John, was firmly attached to Simon de Montfort. It was there, and in the Cinque Ports, and the surrounding districts, that the strongest lovers of constitutional liberty were to be found; and naturally so, for the wealth accumulated in those places made them the first sufferers by royal plunder, and the most eager in the great work of converting the despotic authority into a monarchy limited by law and ancient

custom.

There was a class who had no part in these changes-a stratum below the lowest that now exists in England-the serfs. We have been now and then reminded, while writing this article, of the present condition of that nation, with whom England now, in the full bloom of moral and material development, is engaged in deadly struggle. In some respects, the state of England six hundred years ago, is not unfairly pictured by the present condition of the Russian Empire. In both cases we perceive a despotism whose strength and duration depend on the personal character of the ruler. In both cases the unruly nobility may become a terror to the sovereign. In both cases the subordinate officers of government appear dreadfully corrupt and extortionate, and the courts of justice decide in favor of him who can pay the most. But above all, in both cases, a large proportion of the inhabitants are held as serfs. In Russia landed property is valued not by acres but by souls. So it was in England in the time of Henry II., when the ownership of the master in the slave was absolute, and the runaway might be recovered by process of law. This class had no share in the liberties whose acquisition we have noticed, and history has passed them by in silence.

But there was this difference between the colossal empire of the Cossacks and the England of 1254. The absolutism of the Czar seems impregnable, based on barbarism, and defended by the weapons of civilization. It has no hope or promise for the future. But the England of six hundred years ago contained all the germs of those grand and beautiful proportions which she exhibits to the world to-day. Slowly she had developed law and liberty together, yet without a single retrograde, taking with each decade one step upward, till she has built up an impregnable Constitution, sheltering millions of as happy subjects as any in the world. Outwardly her empire has expanded, not always righteously perhaps. Her flag has circled the world, sometimes an emblem of tyrannical force, but wherever it has been permanently planted, it has waved over a soil protected by English law and right. With it have gone the courts that were defended, and the trial by jury that was legalized by

Henry II., Magna Charta that was wrung out of John, and the great principle of popular representation maintained by the barons and cities of England, and sealed by the blood of Simon de Montfort. All these the colonies of England have inherited from the mother country. They are ours, too-part and parcel of our institutions as much as those of England. Their history is ours. With common pride we read in that past of the growth of great principles watered by the blood of com

mon ancestors.

GIULIA GRISI

WE have the promise of many fine entertainments in NewYork this winter. The popular taste has been greatly im proved within the space of a few past years. Our growing taste for operatic music has given rise to the New-York Academy of Music in Fourteenth Street, and a higher tone is being given to our theatres. The "Merchant of Venice" at Wallack's, the "Midsummer Night's Dream" at Burton's, and other dramas of high character are sure of attracting a house whenever they are presented; and the star actors at the Broadway, Mr. Davenport and many others, have little to complain of in respect to appreciative liberality of histrionic art; the stars of the opera of the old world have become to feel that Jonathan is really no longer a barbarian-no longer an echo. He has tastes, and

correct ones too.

It is difficult for the singers of Europe instantaneously to command from us the homage which they have become so accus tomed to receive at home. We become to associate the pleasure which past excellence has conferred, with present superiority, thus overvaluing in reality the objects we love. Hence the European fame of singers is with difficulty reached with an audience on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Yet, even with greater risks than this, they, by the kindness of the Fates, come among us, that we may become equal to the connoisseurs of London and Paris in judging of the excellences of styles and renderings of music. The poets have ever been accessible to us through our own language as original or translated. Not so with the great wordless poems of Italy and Germany. Our grand old woods, our rushing rivers, our heaving restless oceans, could not be heard in concert, and we had no orchestra

or performers to interpret the spirit range of Mendelssohn or Handel; but our lucky stars sent us Jullien, with his band unrivaled; Lind, with her seraphim voice; Sontag, the peerless; Alboni, the wonder of song; Bosio, the enchantress; Marini, the wizard who stole a note from the tempest; Salvi, to enchant the ladies with that gloriously fine falsetto; and now while I write, the airs are smiling at the presence of beauty and judgment and song embodied in Giulia Grisi. Criticism was on uptoe to find a flaw in Grisi's acting or singing, that vanity or wit might wear another plume. It talked learned sense or nonsense -we are not judges in these things-about mezzo, and registers and rôles, chest voices and head notes. We cared little for such anatomy; but hurried to Castle Garden to live for a while there, on the lip of the ocean, in dreams of Normandy and that most romantic of all religions, associated in dim religious light, through Scott and Hume, with the early romantic history of England. When the Prime Donne was executing the first bar of the music of her rôle, chancing to have our heads turned from the stage, we asked ourselves if it were indeed Grisi who was singing; but time wore on, and Grisi was indeed Norma, though not to us the terrible that is with difficulty conceived as an emanation of the stage. It is with difficulty that we feel the reality of a representation. Indeed, we cannot help knowing that it is only a performance; but as a performance, for chasteness of action, for clearness of enunciation, for doing just what should be done with never a bit too much or too little, for judgment in knowing what her voice is and what it is not capable of without any violation of artistic propriety, we never saw its equal. The Norma of Grisi, as an artistic performance, was never equaled on our lyric stage. It may be that lighter parts have had their requirements as well filled. Bosio charmed us as Zerlina, Sontag as Linda of Chamouni; but neither thrilled us as Norma. Critics may exhaust their learning about the technicalities of art, discover a pearl unstrung from a necklace, still matchless in beauty; time refuse to spare the youth of the most beautiful; but in our dismantled fort, ivy-mantled, on the lip of the ocean, we have been delighted, thrilled, enchanted, by the perfect artist, both in manner and management of voice, and splendid woman Giulia Grisi. If we look for remarkable sounds or feats of vocalization, such as Lind displayed and Sontag affected, we do not find them. But when passion prompts, we may hear as beautiful a tone as ever fell in measured cadence from the lip of mortal. No term characterizes Grisi as an artist, but beautiful. She is above being astonishing even as an actress, and as a singer leaves much less of that painful longing for some

thing which ought to be, but is not, than Sontag. She has neither the wonderful vocalization of Lind, nor the rich voice of Alboni. In short, there is little that is marvelous about her singing or acting, but much that is beautiful.

One may admire her and not be able to tell for what. Is it her acting? It is more. Is it her singing? certainly not her vocalization. She sings the close of the second act of Norma as no one else ever sang it, with enunciation so perfect, with a soul in every way impassioned, indeed, singing with every attitude that the Druidess would be supposed to assume, and every emotion she would be supposed to feel, with a meaning in every note, in all its shapings and roundings, its swell and fall, its beginning and ending. She is to be compared with Lind, only as Byron may be compared with Milton. Never mind that Lind's voice is pure soprano, that Alboni's ranges somewhere between pure contralto and soprano, and Grisi's somewhere between Alboni's and Lind's. Lind's soul was formed for the interpretation of Handel-calm, grand, colossal, Miltonic, starry; Grisi's, passion inspired, passion swayed-in ordinary expression indifferent; in impassioned, fired with Byronic fervor -finds fit utterance, not in unimpassioned, meaningless vocalization, but in interpretation of intense earthly passion. As we read the "Fire of Drift-wood," by Longfellow, beginning with simplicity and closing with graceful measures, the impression of unity, and wholeness is fixed on our minds, and we are moved by a voice which was not heard, but felt in long-lingerings after.

So in Grisi, the common-place beginning, the mezzo voice, which is neither one nor the other, and liable to offend, judged simply as an organ-even Alboni's voice, in ordinary singing, carries with it a painful impression of imperfectionis forgotten; all is forgotten in the thrilling effect of the whole. When the barren soil and the rock combine with the streams and groves to make up a lovelier landscape, than the eye may rest on elsewhere, it is the landscape we love. If the perfect be produced we care not for the manner or means of execution; the effect is what delights us. The highest range of composition can only be reached by a perfect organ, and God has given but two, the soprano and the bass. A soprano alone could do justice to the Messiah. It alone interprets thoughts, serenest, and highest; a voice intermediate may best interpret the passions of this earth, but it alone can soar serenely above its clouds and tempests to the pure empyrean of deathless song.

With Castle Garden, and Niblo's, and the New-York Theatre, and the New-York Academy of Music, there will be ample