MANUEL GARCIA.
[To THE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTATOR,"] SIR,—The death of Manuel Garcia on Sunday last removes from our midst the most interesting centenarian of our day.
Born in 1805, Seiler Garcia perfectly remembered hearing of the battle of Waterloo, and watched the whole development of the nineteenth century with a never-failing and most active intelli- gence. It needs but very little imagination to appreciate of what interest it must have been to a man of understanding to witness the rise, development, and close of the Victorian era,—a march of events which it is difficult for the present generation, born mostly half-way through the epoch, to appreciate in its full significance. Sefior Garcia gave the laryngoscope to science, but his services to art were even greater than to science. Almost to the end of his life he continued to impart that wonderful art of classical Italian singing—ii tel canto—of which he was the greatest exponent. No one who had enjoyed the privilege of hearing him give a lesson could ever forget the flashes of light with which the master illuminated his subject. For a moment the pupil seemed to seize the exact method of over- coming all difficulties. The force, passion, and humour which Seilor Garcia put into his pianoforte accompaniments were in themselves an inspiration. How he would dash at the piano, and, after the pupil's tame and colourless rendering of a passage, would himself sing a few bars with such fire and vigour that the pupil, for- getting the cracked and husky voice of age, would think despairingly : " Oh ! if only I could sing like that." A remark- able figure has vanished from the world ; but after his long and strenuous life we may not grudge him his rest. There is nothing "but what should quiet us" in a death so peaceful.
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