The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-16 00:00:00

MR. BRIGHT ON EDUCATIOLT.

Mr. Bright, in his speech at Birmingham on Saturday,
went over a great deal of old ground. Some interesting
remarks, however, were made about education. The
hon. gentleman said : " I recollect two or three years
ago meeting the late American Minister at dinner at
the house of the late and, I believe, future Speaker
of the House of Commons. He was asked by a gen.
tleman present concerned in the late Education
Commission for particulars about the nature and
quality of the schools in New England, particularly
in the State of Massachusetts, from which the Minister
came. The Minister said the common schools in the State
were so good that they were better on the whole—much
better, he believed—than the private schools of this
country. He himself, and the son and grandson of the
President of the United States, had received education in
one of their common schools. The furniture of their
schools, all the material by which their education is con-
veyod to the children, is very much superior to anything
we have here. I saw not long ago in the office of the
United States Consul at Liverpool a great pile of books
.in Cne of the windows. I asked what they were ; he
fetched some of them for me to look at. I believe that the
best school-books we have in the United Kingdom are
those which have been prepared by the National Board of
Education in Ireland ; but I am forced to believe that
the educational school-books which I examined,
and which had come from New England, are, on the
whole, superior to anything that has been provided
for schools in this country. Now, let any one who thinks
there is a difficulty in this—and do not suppose that I
underrate the difficulty ; there is always a difficulty in
great achievements—let him consider, if there be a diffi-
culty, is it one that we cannot surmount? If you look for-
ward for a generation, and behold all the sons and
daughters of the hard-working class of the United King-
dom, brought up two, or three, or fop years in good schools
of this kind, let me ask you, fathers of families, and if
your wives were here I would ask them, mothers of
your families, whether the better instruction of your
children would not be of untold and incalculable advan-
tage to them, and even to yourselves. I may be told
that the great difficulty is what is called the religious
lifficulty. Perhaps it is ; but it is a difficulty which
every day is lessening, and the difficulty has never
been great in the minds of the great body of the people.
It is a difficulty which has been mainly created by minis-
ters of religion ; not with any wrong intention, but because
their eyes were so much directed to one question— to one
great object of human endeavour—that they seemed to feel
it necessary to be blind to everything else. Their
conscientious objections for there are conscientious
objections which are very mistaken and very
ignorant—their conscientious objection have created this
great difficulty ; but I believe, and I say it with intense
satisfaction, that, judging from all that I have observed,
from the sayings of clergymen of the Established Church,
and from the sayings of ministers of other sects, from day
to day the difficulty is diminishing, and may become
extinct. Probably some persons may think there are rates
enough already, and to add a school rate to the other rates
would only be to add burden to burden. But let me
remind you that as the school rate would rise if
it were well employed, the pcor rate would fall. We
know, all of us—it is not a matter that wants discussing
from this platform—every man in the kingdom knows
perfectly well that the want of instruction for our children
is the cause of a very large amount of the intemperance,
the profligacy, the idleness, the poverty, and the crime
with which our country is disfigured. Besides, we all
know, too, that those who have property would always
feel, not only that their property was more secure, but
that it was more valuable in the midst of an instructed
population. We are a great people now ; but how much
greater should we be then ? We are a people of great
wealth now, but how much greater would be our wealth
then? For every instructed man is twice the instrument
for the production of wealth that an uninstructed man is.
The enormous waste which is caused in this country by
recklessness and idleness and the intemperance of the
uninstructed is beyond the power of figures to calculate or
'escribe."

ROSSINI.

Ciovechino Rossini is dead, and among modern musi-
cians there is none who has the slightest pretence to take his
place. At the ripe age of seventy-six he has passed away
from us, leaving behind him a number of works as to
whose merits musical critics are almost unanimous.
Half the glory of the Italian Opera would be
gone were it shorn of the works of this great
master. He was born in 1792 at Pisano, of poor parents ;
his father was an indifferent performer on the French
horn in a strolling company of musicians that played about
at fairs and merry-makings in the towns and villages of
Italy, and on the termination of their season lived on the
savings reserved from their precarious earnings. The
young Rossini made one of the party when only 10 or 12
years old ; and picked up, in a desultory and crude
manner, the elements of an art in which he was destined
to become master of world-wide and lasting celebrity.
The only portion which he received from his father was,.
we are told, "a little music, a little religion, and a volume=
of Ariosto." At the age of fifteen, after being employed
as choir-boy in the Bologna Church, he entered the
Lyceum of that city and became the pupil of Mattei. Like
most other great musicians, Rossini composed at an early
age, and became famous before he was twenty ; unlike most
other musicians, the greater part of his life has been spent
in comparative idleness, and he has contributed very little
to the music of the present day. Many reasons have been
given for this : one of them was a jealously of his only
possible rival, Meyerbeer, since whose death his hand has
again occasionally taken to its cunning. At the great
Exhibition of 1862, Rossini refused to write an overture, and
it was then understood that the old man bad not sufficient
confidence to compete with the gigantia Meyerbeer. There
is too much matter of immediate importance just
now to fill the columns of a newspaper
for us to note the numerous works of this master, and
their relative value. Suffice it to mention his "Tancredi,"
brought out at Venice in 1812 ; his " Mose in Egitto," and
" Otello," &c., soon after produced; and his chef d'ceuvre
"Il Barbiere di Seviglia," in 1816. " Semiramide " ap-
peared in 1823, and was his last work for the Italian
theatres. He has at different periods been musical director
at the theatre of San Carlo, Naples, has made his appear-
ance at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, and has been
director of the Italian Opera in Paris. This latter appoint.
ment he retained till 1830. He then retired from professional
life to live at Passy. Since that time the only composition of
great importance which he has written is the familiar
" Stabat Mater," in which he depicts so dramatically the
seven sorrows of the Blessed Virgin. This composition
has ever been a leading feature in the services of the
Roman Catholic Church, but, in spite of its extraordinary
beauty, has not gained for Rossini the celebrity as
a composer of sacred music which his similar
compositions have done as a composer of opera.
We must not omit to mention his great work "William
Tell," which takes rank with " Il Barbiere" as a masterpie ee.
The apathetic audiences of the opera houses invariably
are in their seats before the performance of the overture,
a compliment which they seldom pay to any other but
Beethoven's "Fidelio." The conductors always prepare for
an encore as a matter of course. The following is the por-
tion of a letter writtenby Mendelssohn describing a visitto
Ferdinand Hiller, and is an interesting personal description.
" Early yesterday I went to see him, and whom should I
find sitting there but Rossini, as large as life, in his best
and most amiable moos]. I really know few men who can
be so amusing and witty as he, when he chooses ; he
kept us laughing incessantly the whole time. I
promised that the St. Cecilia Association should sing
for him the B minor Mass and some other things
of Sebastian Bach's. It will be quite too charming
to see Rossini obliged to admire Sebastian Bach ; he
thinks, however, `different countries, different customs,'
and is resolved to howl with the wolves. He says he is
enchanted with Germany, and when he once gets the list
of wines at the Rhine Hotel in the evening the waiter
is obliged to shew him his room, or he could never
manage to find it. He relates the most laughable and
amusing things about Paris and the musicians there,
as well as of himself and his compositions, and enter-
tains the most profound respect for all the men
of the present day, so that you might really
believe him, if you had no eyes to see his sarcastic face.'
Intellect and animation and wit sparkle in all his feae
tures and in every word, and those who do not consider
him a genius ought to hear him expatiating in this way;
and they would change their opinion." Rossini in his
retirement has been petted, flattered, and surrounded by
artists and men of letters, societywhich he clearly loved. His
wealth was enormous, and his collection of orders,medals,
and ribands is supposed to be nearly the largest in the world.
No one has done so much for the opera since Mozart. The
plan of the old style of florid opera has been much criti-
cised in these modern times, but Rossini has made that
style immortal. A more perfect dramatic form may be
adopted by modern musicians, but the skill of the maestro
will be wanting. A sculptor can no more knock a breath.
ing living man out of marble than musical training
can make a true musician. Perhaps it was time
for Rossini to depart when the vulgar Offenbach became
the rage. Let us hope for a revival of a better feeling,
when Haydn shall not be pronounced frivolous amt
Schumann divine. Rossini has won a deathless fame;
humanity is the better for his life ; his victory has cost no
suffering., and his qiumplis no woes. The strifes of the
day-prevent us from pausing long over the great man's
grave ; let us console ourselves that when the noise of poli
tical contests shall have passed away, and the absorbing
topics of the time shall find but a corner in the
pages of Listory, the melodies of Rossini will pre-
serve his fame for ever. Art lives longer than
all else. Creeds and political systems may pass
away, the mythology of the Greek may become
an idle fable : but the art of the Greek is always a beautiful
reality. Such men as Rossini are links binding one gene-
ration to another by means of a golden chain of that
harmony which is of heavenly origin, and w1':;2.1,, fliad4 fy
response 11111Q11g all peoples mid in, All times.