MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY. (Concluded from Page 60.) THE author of the above biographical history concludes his ingenious and entertaining work with the following German composers, which have flourished from 1750 to 1812. CRAMER, SENIOR. "This excellent performer on the violin was born at Manheim, in Germany. His father was in the suite of the late Prince Maximilian, who having observed in the young man a strong indication of musical talent, was at the expence of providing him with proper instructions in the science, and with the intention of still further aiding his improvement, permitted him to travel through Italy, Germany, and France. "After this he visited England, where he married. He was appointed to the situation of leader of the band at the Opera House, and was for several years at the head of his profession. "His wife dying he entered a second time into the connubial state with Miss Madan, a young lady of respectable connexions in Ireland. The emoluments arising to him from the Opera House, and from his employment as a private teacher of the violin, were for many years very great; but from want of due attention to economy his affairs became involved, and, for the purpose of extricating himself from his pecuniary difficulties, a friendly commission of bankruptcy was obtained. Previously, however, to this event he had been superseded as leader of the Opera band by Viotti. This loss, added to the change of his circumstances, visibly affected both his health and spirits, from which he never recovered. He died at his residence in Charles-street, Mary-le-bone, on the 5th of October, 1799." JOHN CHRISTIAN FISCHER, "Long known and celebrated in this country for his admirable performance on the hautboy, was a native of Fribourg, in Germany. "Fischer's first public appointment as a musician, appears to have been that of a member of the King of Poland's band at Dresden. He afterwards went, for a little time, to Berlin; where, in consequence of the temporary disgrace of C. P. E. Bach, he was permitted the honour to accompany Frederic, the then King of Prussia, alone, for four hours every day. He next went to Manheim, and from thence to Paris, where he performed at the Concert Spirituel with the most enthusiastic applause. "From Paris he came to London; and as soon as he had been once heard in public, no concert was thought complete without his performance. On being engaged to play a concerto every night at Vauxhall, he drew thither all the lovers of music, but particularly professors; among whom was the elder Park, who played the hautboy at Drury-Lane Theatre, and who used to quit his post, and forfeit half his night's salary, for the purpose of going to Vauxhall to hear him. "At the formation of the Queen's band, Fischer was appointed one of her Majesty's chamber-musicians. He left England in 1786. Returning towards the end of the following year, he continued here during the remainder of his life. "Fischer was unhappy in his marriage with the daughter of Gainsborough the painter, which greatly embittered the remainder of his life. She had external beauty, grace, and accomplishments; but he, with a good person, and superior genius for his art, was extremely deficient in colloquial eloquence, and in all those indefinable charms which engage the attention and endear the speaker. He had not a grain of sense but what he breathed through his reed; he never spoke more than three words at a time, and those were either negatives or affirmatives. "Fischer was seized with an apoplectic fit during his performance at his Majesty's concert at the Queen's house, about the year 1803, and died very shortly after he removed to his own home." The following anecdotes in the biography of André Grétry, which concludes the book, are extremely interesting. ANDRE GRETRY "Was born in Liege, in 1741. At an early age he became sensible of the charms of music; and to this sensibility, when he was only four years old, he was near falling a sacrifice. Being left alone in a room where some water was boiling in an iron pot over a wood fire, the sound caught his ear, and for some time he amused himself with dancing to it. The curiosity of the child, however, was at length excited to uncover the vessel, and in so doing he overset it; the water fell upon him and dreadfully scalded him from head to foot. "When he was six years old his father placed him in the choir of the collegiate church of St. Denis. An accident, which || for a time put a stop to his studies, deserves to be here related. It was usual at Liege || to tell children that God will grant to them whatever they ask of him at their first communion. Young Grétry had long pur posed to pray on this occasion, that he might immediately die if he were not destined to be an honest man, and a man of eminence in his profession.' On that very day, having gone to the top of the tower to see men strike the wooden bells which are always used during the Passion week, a beam of considerable weight fell on his || head and laid him senseless on the floor. A person who was present ran for the extreme unction; but, on his return, he found the youth upon his legs. On being shewn the heavy log which had fallen on him, 'Well, well,' he exclaimed, since I am not killed, I am now sure that I shall be an honest man and a good musician.' "From this time his disposition was considerably altered; his former gaiety gave way in a great measure to melancholy, and never afterwards visited him except at intervals. || || "His voice began to break; it would then || have been prudent to have forbidden his singing; but this not having been done a spitting of blood was brought on, to which, on any exertion, he was ever afterwards subject. "Not long subsequently to this he was placed under the care of Moreau. One of the first things which he did was to carry to his master a mass which he had just completed. 6 Stay, stay,' said Monsieur Moreau, you proceed too fast; write a treble to this bass, but attempt no more masses.'—' I could not restrain my musical impetuosity, Sir,' said Grétry; 'I had a thousand musical ideas in my head, and was eager to make use of them.' "Grétry walked to Rome in the early part of 1759, being then only eighteen years of age. The ardour with which he pursued his musical studies was so great, that it suffered him to pay but little attention to his health. This consequently became so much impaired that he was obliged, for a while, to leave Rome and retire into the country. He stopped at Geneva, and there composed his first French opera of Isabelle and Gertrude. Respecting the performance of this work he relates an amusing anecdote. One of the performers in the orchestra, a dancing-master, came to me in the morning, previously to the representation, to inform me that some young people intended to call for me on the stage with acclamation at the end of the piece, in the same manner as at Paris. I told him I had never seen that done in Italy. You will, however, see it here,' said he; and you will be the first composer who has received this honour in our republic.'—It was in vain for me to dispute the point; he would absolutely teach me the bow that I was to make with a proper grace. As soon as the opera was finished they called for me, sure enough, and with great violence, and I was obliged to appear to thank the audience for their indulgence; but my friend in the orchestra cried out aloud, Poh! that is not it! not at all! but get along! What is the matter?' said his brethren in the orchestra. ‘I am out of all patience; there did I go to his lodgings this morning, on purpose to shew him how to behave himself nobly, and did you ever see such an awkward booby?' Grétry, during the anarchy which reigned a few years ago in France, became tainted with revolutionary principles; and he even went so far as to publish a work on the subject of religion, entitled De la Verité ce que nous fûmes, ce que nous sommes, ce que nous devrons être, which shews him also to have been deeply tinctured with infidelity. He died at Montmorency, on the 24th of September, 1813." THE DIVORCE.-A TALE. RELATED BY A MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTER. (Continued from Page 65.) MR. DORMEUIL, as I have mentioned "You have told me that it was no lon before, had entered a new firm. His part-ger possible to live with me: I shall not ners and associates, disgusted with my man- try to investigate which of us two is chang. ners, had given up inviting me; and, in ed. Hitherto, I believe, I have faithfully order to keep up appearances, I had re-fulfilled my duty, and am still ready to nounced seeing any company. Some few make for your sake all the sacrifices that old friends, however, would occasionally || will endanger my character, or the dearest come to visit me in my solitude, when Mr. Dormeuil began reproaching me with making him a stranger in his own house to all his acquaintance, informing me, at the same time, in an imperative tone, that he wished all to be admitted by whom he was received himself. I remained silent. He added, that he was determined to give a ball, that the day was fixed upon, and that he hoped I would not offer such an affront to his friends as to refuse presiding at that little fete. I still continued silent. He sat down to his desk and wrote the list of his invitations, which he presented to me. As soon as I had read it, I took up a pen, erased the name of the woman he preferred to me, and, returning the list, said: "Such as it is now, Sir, I adopt it, and without the least difficulty am ready to submit my inclination to your will."-I stood trembling: had he not been guilty, what would that sacrifice have cost him? If he had had the least condescension, had he merely wished to justify himself, I am but too sensible of it, I should have been weak enough to except no one; but he flew in a passion, and left me abruptly, holloaing out that it was no longer possible to live with me. sentiment of my heart. Permit me to retire into the country, which will agree better with me and with your daughter in our present state of health. There I shall teach her how to be patient, and to conquer a sensibility so dangerous for our sex. This plan must suit you well, as it will leave you at liberty to indulge all your propensities. I shall wait for your consent before I make all necessary preparations for my departure. Neither shall I ever return till you call me back. If you should be so happily situated as never to want my at|| tendance, your peace and tranquillity will be an alleviation to my everlasting sorrow. Dormeuil! if 1 may presume to recollect what you said to me once in an agony of repentance, the path which you now tread is not the road to happiness." These words resounded within my heart, and it revolted. What! the mother of a family! a woman undeserving of any reproach; a faithful companion, who, without hesitation, had endangered her life to save that of her husband. What! was such a woman to be deprived the right of rejecting the society of her rival, of the mistress of her children's father! Through the fear of having too great an advantage if an explanation, that was become necessary, was to take place, I avoided it, and wrote to Mr. Dormeuil the following lines: Must I inform you, my child, how your father answered my letter? By the judicial proposition of a divorce, on account of the incompatibility of our tempers; and it was he who did, or at least who pretended to go into the country, with a view, no doubt, of avoiding the reproaches which only my presence accumulated against him. Six years of happiness, four years of entire submission, what I had done for him, his peace of mind which I had restored, the idea of his daughter-all were overlooked; neither did he throw into the scale any other consideration to counterbalance the only fault he might ever have found with me, although the original author himself, with the passion he felt for Mademoiselle Olivier; your sister's mother was so called. What a severe blow! I have lost my name, my support, my connections! At the age of eight-and-twenty, shall I then find myself left alone with you in this world, supposing even that you are not me; you then swore you would be my protector. I claim the execution of your promise; never in my life have I stood in such need of being protected, and who will yield me a support if you reject me? "When my expiring mother laid hold of our hands and joined them,-when she beseeched you to be more than a husband, to me, when she transferred to you all the rights and authority that nature had given her over her daughter,-when both you and I fell on our knees before her bed to receive her blessing: remember how at that moment the paleness of death over torn away from me? What can I oppose to so much ingratitude? If I were allowed to see Mr. Dormeuil, I should embrace his knees, my despair should move him; but I am told that he is gone on a journey; his return may be delayed, and when the most poignant grief, the most unbounded submission might still melt the heart of a guilty husband, I am to meet only an agent, a steward who cannot comprehend me, who, nevertheless, pities me,-who weeps with me, but who, notwithstanding, sues for that dreadful divorce with an activity that redoubles my distress. An attorney opposed to an unfortunate, distract-spread her face. You took the oath never ed wife! How barbarous! Merciful God! Marriage, that union which I shall never cease considering as a bond equally sacred and indissoluble, is now become a mere pecuniary concern; and when my tears call back my husband, when I claim my right, and that my tears are intermixed with the accents of betrayed love, I am spoken to of money matters-I receive positions in answer! pro to forsake me,' and a moment after life had coloured her countenance. Dormeuil, if you believe that the laws can free a man from keeping his oath taken to the living, you will not be sotimpious as to believe that any earthly power can annul the observance of that which my mother claims from her grave. Should I be reprehensible as a wife, yet you would be bound to protect me on account of all the rights and authority with which she has invested you over me. "When from that death-bed we proceeded to the altar, what did you promise to the God in whose name our union was going to be sanctified? Have courage enough to recollect that period. Could the remembrance of a moment, which then made you so happy, now be so painful? Had I been inclined to secure to myself the right of dis In compliance to my request, however, I was promised to have a letter forwarded to Mr. Dormeuil. So then I now stood in need of a confidant to address him who was acquainted with all my secrets, with whom I deposited the most precious sentiments I ever felt, and am informed, at the same time, that all my efforts will be of no avail. I am treated like a patient whose every whim is gratified, on account of its being certain that no recovery is to be ex-solving our union at any future period, pected. Alas! my dear child, what a situation! MADAME DORMEUIL'S LETTER TO HER HUSBAND. would you have accepted my hand? I shall answer for you: No. As for me, if the priest had said to me: 'God who receiveth your oaths, will allow you to perjure yourself one day to come; the man to whom "SIR,You are imposed upon,-so you will be every thing, may perhaps one much cruelty is foreign to your disposition, day be nothing to you; that which heaven 1 must either think so or die. What do unites shall be disunited without heaven you require from me? I consent, before being offended:' 1 now protest to God himyou even mention what it may be; but do self, by those duties that I have constantly not deprive me of your name. It is, of all fulfilled, and the love that I have vowed to that you have bestowed upon me, the only you, which love has survived your injusone that I claim. Without your support, tice; never Dormeuil himself would have without you, what am I in this world? been my husband. What did you promise Dormeuil, when my mother chose you for to God? Never to forsake me. Can the my husband, when bathed in tears at being laws disengage you towards the Deity? certain of her approaching dissolution, 1 Does honour allow you to reject me by virtook you aside, and that, alone with you, tue of those laws that existed not when I I exclaimed from my heart, Never forsake I became your wife? since you cannot dis avow, that if they had existed, we should have remained for ever strangers to each other. ¡tion, 1 agree to every thing, if, at such a price, I can save you. You promised once to watch over me,―well! I shall willingly sacrifice myself for you, but let us not divorce. If ever my daughter, subsequent to your having made your own terms, should call me to an account respecting her fortune, I shall tell her, without any farther explanation, ‘I have given up to purchase the preservation of thy father,' and my child then will bless me. Dormeuil, since you repent, at present, having married me,— since the parent of your daughter is become so unbearable to you, only reflect on the natural fickleness of your disposition, who will be able to fix you when I have failed in so doing? Dormeuil, I am inno "Ungrateful Dormeuil! When I was torn away from my mother's bed, and was carried dying into thine arms, thou knowest with what incredible facility thy caresses dried up the source of my tears; thy joy became mine, thy existence and mine were now made one and the same. Oh! if I cease being thy wife, what am I then in mine own eyes? After twelve year marriage, must decency be alarmed, and shall I be condemned to blush, for not being able to say any more, when I point out to the father of my child-that is my husband? "How shall I bear the looks of the pub-cent; I am certain that your heart does lic, when every beholder is inclined to slander in proportion to his immorality? If thou discardest me, I must be guilty, or thou art the most unjust of all mortals. Cruel alternative! I must either blush at my own enormities, or for the father of my | child-for my husband, for such thou shalt ever be, Dormeuil. To whatever excesses thy passions may drive thee, in spite of our new laws, in spite of thyself, I will retain thy name, the title of thy wife; and if thou wert barbarous enough to wed another, think of it well, it would be at once thy wretchedness and thy condemnation. I say thy condemnation, because the public would judge both thy conduct and mine; thy wretchedness, for what canst thou expect from a woman, who, in hopes of becoming thine, prompts thee to betray the most sacred duties. For the sake of thine own happiness, Dormeuil, enter not into other bonds. Thou art well aware that infidelity itself admits not of a return, but that the pride of forgiving is the most welcome of all indemnifications to the heart of a faith-greater length; but I was afraid of wearyful wife. "Do not suffer yourself, my beloved, to be trepanned. Corrupt laws are but of short duration: the excess of the evil soon points out the necessity of a remedy: you know besides, that the most dissolute people do not, however, consent to be ruled by laws as vicious as themselves. me justice in that respect, and yet you think of rejecting me! You alone know who I am. If you deprive me of your name, you will rob me of more than you would do any other woman in the same situation. Shall I entrust the public with the secret of my birth, and of the misfortunes of my mother? You became every thing to me, for the very reason that you alone were considered as deserving of such a confidence; I might have chosen another husband, yet I preferred you, under a persuasion that you would secure me against the mortification too frequently attached to those who have no family to claim. By how manifold titles are you and I united? I speak not here of those that everlastingly bind me to you. The most sacred is the love I have vowed to bear you, the expression of which, however, I must silence, since it is the only means your unfortunate wife has left, at present, of pleasing you." You may easily imagine, my dear child, that I had motives sufficient to write at ing with my writing, the man who had been so cruel as to tell me in my face, that there was no possibility of living with me any longer. With what impatience did I wait for his answer! If Dormeuil answers my letter, would I say, my triumph is certain; and that triumph consisted in saving him; for "Believe me, virtue is not illusory; nei-myself, personally, I hoped for nothing. ther is it so easily deluded as vice. You But although the heart of a wife, may be have ceased loving me, you can no longer deceived in its most tender feelings, she live with me; far from using recrimina- "has still many duties to fulfil. |