And bear any pressure your force can compel;
You sit on the safety-valve, therefore, in short.
O William the Daring! O Robert the Rash!
Though deaf to remonstrance, to caution give ear,
Ere high-pressure boiler burst up with a crash,
And blow aloft Stoker and hoist Engineer.
SAD ALTERATION.
The Dramatist has led us to think that "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," but the "Heavenly Maid" is not so "young" as she was when Congreve wrote, and increasing years seem to have changed her mood and spoiled her temper. What other conclusion can we come to, when we find in an article on "Music" in one of the newspapers, in some comments on the performance of a young lady on the piano at a Monday Popular Concert, the disquieting statement that she "left her mark as usual on the audience, the music, and the piano"? It is some little relief to find the writer adding that "this last was more than once punished severely;" as it is a fair inference to draw, that whatever the sufferings of the piano may have been, the music, and, which is far more important, the audience, escaped with only one assault.
The Managers of the Monday Concerts should consider, before it is too late, whether they are not endangering the well-deserved popularity of their agreeable entertainments, by allowing performances which would seem to have rather too striking an effect upon the hearers.