There is where the deep ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed.

It deals so largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts.
A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.
I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans like so much as an opera.

They like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their whole hearts.

This is a legitimate result of habit and education.

Our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt.