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Opera and Musical Entertainments.
Opera is a form of entertainment which, though very popular in America and England, does not appeal to me.

I know that those who are fond of music love to attend it, and that the boxes in an opera house are generally engaged by the fashionable set for the whole season beforehand.

I have seen members of the "four hundred" in their boxes in a New York opera house; they have been distinguished by their magnificent toilettes and brilliant jewelry; but I have been thinking of the Chinese drama, which, like the old Greek play, is also based on music, and Chinese music with its soft and plaintive airs is a very different thing from the music of grand opera.

Chinese music could not be represented on Western instruments, the intervals between the notes being different.