London, May 13.
That the ways of Nature are past! nding out is not an original remark. Solomon, you remember, said some-{thing very like it and no doubt others before him. But its truth is brought home again with special force by the Decullar glory of the blossom this spring, T have never seen anything like the appletrees. There is one in cottage! garden, 100 yards from where I live, fas large asa big haystack, and all over with its branches drooping nearly to the ground, a perfectly solid expanse of pinky-white blossom. Many old trees which have searcely had a blossom for years have recovered a second youth and are rich in colour. It is the same everywhere, It has also been the same with all the bulbs, daffodils, marcissis and tulips. Nevver was' such a year for them. A quarter of a million tulips in bloom in the London parks London soil is amazingly tile.
Always you get as fine a display of flowers there as any place in town or country can show. his year it is beyond description.
Yet we have had a cold, very prolonged and abnormally dry winter. Clever gardeners, with the aid of cleverer chemists, can tell us how to keep a good normal average of a But from time to. ti Nature, for semic reason beyond analysis" by the most discerning, decides to show what she can do, and then we get such an absolutely in-Noxicating display of colour and fragrance as now.
"Schwanda" Presented "Schwanda," the Czech opera, produced at Covent Garden the night before last, seems destined to become as popular in London as it has Proved everywhere on the Continent. The audience greeted it with joy and happy laughter, it is acclaimed the ost charming opera since "Rosenkavallier," and it achieves the seemingly Impossible feat of pleasing both the high brow who cannot endure music with a tune, and the low brow who believes that music without one is not music.
The story is of the lightest. Schwanda the village bagpipe player, is tempted away to the town to try his" art on a. wider audience. He plays before the Queen and is caught by his wife kissing her, he denies the kiss, may the devil take me if [did it he exclaims, the devil does take him and there follows a most amusing scene in the infernal regions, from which the bagpipe ultimately rescues Schwanda, who returns to his village to settle down with his faithful, although so_ long deserted wife. As you see, a variant on the old theme of "The Magic Flute," and, no doubt, if you like to moralize rather than be amused, you might twist all sorts of profound significances out of the story.
Not the least charming part of the music, which has a delightful rush land exhilaration all through, is the fragments of Czech folk-lore tunes woven into it. Like the mysteries of Nature's horticulture, the existence and undying charm of these old pri-initive tunes in all nations, is one of the most curious things in' mankiné's history. I have heard Italian peasants, when they did not know outsider was listening, singing tunes that are believed to date from the!
Etruscans—that is before Romulus and Remus. In the English West country old tunes have been handed down undoubtedly through many centuries, but again the "foreigner" is very lucky if he can ever get to) hear them.
Russia is rich in. folk songs, as of courge are the Scandina. vian" countries. Racial differences are pronouncedly marked in them all, yet they have a certain feeling of parent resemblance, and all est an origin much older than and distinct from, humanity.
In modern times I have seen one popular tune, and only one, described by orities as very nearly worthy become a piece of folk-lore, and that is "Pop goes the weasel!" first one is inclined to say, "But how absurd Yet if you hum the tune] over to yourself once or twice carefully you will agree that there. is more in what the critics say about it than there is in some of their dicta. Dare I apropos, risk quoting this limerick in the hope that it may be new to some readers—
There was a young man of East Sheen, Whose musical taste was not Keen.
We said, "It is odd, But I catinot. tell "God Save the Weasel!" from Pop goes the I fear that will never rank as a bit of folk-lore but it is quite one of the things to cheer one on a dull day.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.