PICCOLOMINI, MARIA,
One of the stars of the London season of 1856, is a native of Tienna, in Tuscany, where she was born in 1834; she is consequently yet quite young. She is extremely beautiful, a delightful singer, an impressive actress, and noble in her family connections. All these circumstances combined to raise quite a furor among the excitable people of Turin, where she made her first appearance in Verdi's opera La Traviata. On the last night of her engagement at the theatre called Carignan, a vast conccurse of people assembled to greet her as she came forth, and were about to take the horses from her carriage, but she told them, with flushed cheek and flashing eyes, that men should not put themselves in the place of beasts—that Italy had other and nobler uses for her sons; and finding them set on paying her this degrading homage, she passed out of the theatre by a back door, and made her way to her hotel on foot. On a subsequent occasion her residence was surrounded at night by an excited crowd bent on manifesting their frantic delight at her musical powers. She sternly rebuked the young men of Italy for their levity, and pointed out how they could more nobly fulfil the great object of their existence. All this gives us the impression that Maria Piccolomini is not only a great musical artiste, but that she is great also in mind and character. A London audience would not manifest delight in so rapturous a manner as an Italian would, yet it was evident that on her first public appearance in our metropolis she made a great impression. Her voice is rather sweet than powerful, and she has the disadvantage of being small of stature; but her rich warbling melody, bursting forth in bird-like trills and gushes, is a thing to dwell in the memory, and remain "a joy for ever."
PICHLER, CAROLINE,
Was born in Vienna, in 1769. This very prolific and elegant writer has left an autobiography, under the title of "Review of my Life;" from this source have been gleaned the facts which form this sketch.
Her mother was the orphan of an officer who died in the service of the Empress Maria Theresa, who took very gracious notice of of the young lady, gave her a good education, and retained her near her person as a reader, until she was very respectably and happily married to an aulick counsellor. After their marriage, their tastes being congenial, they drew round them a circle of musical and literary celebrities; and their position at court being an elevated one, their house became the centre of the best society, in every sense of the word. Caroline, from her babyhood, breathed an atmosphere of literature; she was accustomed to hear the first men in science and in politics discuss interesting subjects, and converse upon elevated topics. Among many German professors and poets whose names are less familiar to the English reader, Maffei and Metastasio may be mentioned as intimates of this family. When it became time to give their son a Latin master, the parents of Caroline were assailed by the savants who visited their house, with the assurance that the little girl must share in this advantage—they had perceived the intelligence of her mind, and were desirous
