FEMALE SINGERS.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 2018, 23 October 1869, Page 2

FEMALE SINGERS.

Popular applause is lavished on public singers in a manner that scarcely any other woman can possibly enjoy. When Piccolomini sang in Italy, they not only showered bouquets upon her, but now and then a white dove fluttered to her feet. When Jenny Lind sang at Stockholm the rush for seats was so great that they were put up for auction, and realised fabulous sums, all of which went to a fund to establish a school for decayed artists. As a body, there is no one more charitable than musical artists. When in 1847, the Misses Penn (then not so well-known to fame, heard that a society for homeless children must fall to the ground for want of funds, they volunteered, unasked, to give a concert for its benefit, which was eminently successful. Clara Novello’s triumphs ought not to be forgotten. At Genoa her audiences threw bouquets ing valuable coronets at her feet, to say nothing of the cameliaa worth twenty* five guineas a piece, and they escorted her home with torches and flambeau. A greater triumph, however, has scarcely been achieved by any singer than the unparalleled reception given to Patti of late in Russia. The sums which fortunate singers realise, too, is almost incredible. Everybody, doubtremembers Gabrielli’s reply to Catherine 11. of Russia, when she expressed her astonishment at her demanding 8000 ducats for singing, by saying—- “ Why, I don’t pay a field-marshal a« much as that.” “ Well, then, get the field-marshal to sing to you." The Empress seems to have seen the force of the argument, and paid the demand. There are so few first-rate voices in the world that they can always secure their price, The said Gabriel li made a large fortune and lived in the greatest splendour. The anecdotes of her extravagance are endless. One will suffice, A Florentine noble who came to pay his court to her caught a costly lace ruffle in the trimming of her dress and tore it. As a compensation, she sent him six bottles of Spanish wine, corked with Flemish lace. Mrs Billington at one time realised an income of LI 4,000 a year, Rubeni’s income one year amounted to LOO,OOO. In these days, when money is so necessary, no wonder people wish to make their mark on the stage.

Probable Fate of the English Church. —The Law Times says : —Although it •will be an Irish experiment, it will excite almost as much interest in England, for it is impossible not to recognise the fact that the English institution must speedily share the fate of its Irish sister. The Liberal whip, we believe, gives to the English Church twenty years of life. We believe it will not survive for ten years, and for a reason which does not appear to have presented itself to any one of the many speculators upon the value of its life. There will be arrayed against it precisely the same forces that have extinguished the Established Church in Ire* land, and they will be recruited by a force which nobody seems to have calculated upon. The disestablished Protestants of who have been hitherto the staunch allies and supporters of the Church of England, will now go over to the opposite camp and be among the foremost of its assailants—at once weakening the defensive force they quit, aqd increasing the hostile force they join. Churches are made up of men, an 4 the fox with the shorn tail illustrates a universal weakness in human nature. The Irish Disestablished Church will naturally desire to see the English Church treated as them* selves. The Protestant party in Ireland returns some thirty members, and their se* cession will swell the majority of 120 to 180. With such a majority in favor of the abolition of the English Church, it is not probable that any long time will be suffered to pass without turning it to account. Wisdom counsels preparation. The Guk of the Future.— Upon this subject Sir W. Armstrong, in his address at the meeting of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in Newcastle, last week, said :— “I will now offer a few re* marks on the interesting question of the probable future of guns. Upon the solution of this question depends the pattern of future ships, and also the policy of continuing or abandoning the straggle of armor plates against guns. From my previous remarks on the increase of pressure with which we have had to contend as wo have increased the size of our guns, it might be inferred that we were now nearly reaching a limit beyond which the strength and endurance of our material would not enable us to pass. I am not prepared to say how far we could have advanced under the recently-existing conditions ; but, certainly, every increase of siro would have been attended with increase of difficulty, A new light, however, has just dawned upon the subject, which entirely alters the prospect. It has become apparent that the Crder we have been using can be so modias to produce the required effect with greatly less strain upon the gun. It may appear paradoxical that there should bs a limit to the theoretical advantage of increasing the initial pressure of the gas evolved in the gun but the apparent anomaly will disappear on exam nation. The action of expanding gas in a gun is analagons to that of expanding steam in a cylinder of a steamengine, and wo all know the advantage in the case of steam of having a high pressure to begin with, provided a steam-jacket b» used to maintain the material of the cylinder at a temperature equal to that of the entering steam. But in a gun we can have no provision analagous to the steam-jacket, and it would appear that it is owing to the necessary absence of such a provision that

„ “j * there is a limit to the incre/isC of ’initial pressure, beyond which no gain-of prapelling force is realised.” A New Method of Grafting Fruit Trees. —The readers of horticultural publications are aware that Mr A. Boisselot, of Nantes, France, is the inventor of a very useful method of grafting the vine, which is to insert the graft in the fork between two branches. The advantage of this mode of grafting the vine has been generally recognised. but no one before has thought of applying it to other trees, and A. Boisselot himself was not aware of the great service he rendered to horticulture when he published his invention. I have applied it to agn at variety of trees, but principally to the pear, to experiment with new varieties of peas which I receive in great numbers every year. Before I knew Boisselot s system I could not make use of a great number of tbe gifis 1 received, not being willing to sacrifice the trees that were yielding me yearly a quantity of fruit; the old system of cleft-grating necessitating the mutilation of the whole tree, or at least its principal branches. During the last two years I have grafted every variety of pears I have received (and at any time of the year) according to the Beisselot system, the grafts have grown like the other branches of the trees, and some of them bore fruit last year. I can thus keep my old trees until I find that the new sorts are profitable to the old ones, and most likely I shall not ho obliged to cut them down, as several sorts of pears can very well live and prosper together en the same tree, I have thus increased my enjoyment. The method is, of course, not very practicable on largo trees, but is principally useful' for small gardens where espaliers and dwarfs are grown, to take up less space. By this method, with a limited number of trees, a freat many varieties of fruit can be grown, t can also be usefully employed for experimenting with seedlings th*t show signs of excellence. It must be understood that no part of the branches between which the grafts are inserted is to be cut back ; therefore no mutilation of any part of the old trees Is necessary, as is the case in cleftgrafting. — M. Jean Sisley.