quickly forced to cede the crown to "his friend and ally," Napoleon, who conferred it on his brother Joseph, King of Naples, on June 6th.

But it was one thing to proclaim Joseph King of Spain, another to place him in power. The patriotism of the Spanish people was stirred to its depths, and they declined to accept a new monarch supported by French troops. In every quarter insurrections broke out and juntos were formed.

One was able to get a graphic picture of the horrors of that outbreak from the reminiscences which Señor Garcia used to give, for it made an impression on his childhood which remained undimmed throughout the successive years of his life. Indeed, it was more than ninety years later that I recall his speaking of these scenes one afternoon when the ill-starred war, which his beloved country was at the time carrying on against the United States, brought to his mind the memory of that other war nearly a century before.

"During the weeks which succeeded Joseph Bonaparte's assumption of the Spanish throne," he said, "there arose great bitterness between the peasants and the invaders. Daily, when the roll-call was read, a number of French soldiers failed to answer to their names: during the preceding night the unhappy men would have been murdered in their beds by the inmates of the houses in which they had been quartered in the surrounding villages."

The French exacted terrible reprisals for this, and he vividly recalled the long line of men, youths, and even boys who were forced to run the gauntlet between the rows of soldiers on their way to wholesale execution. "Shoot every one old enough to hold a gun." So ran the cruel order, given out day after day to the soldiers in many districts.

On the 2nd of May a wholesale massacre of the French took place in Madrid, and the survivors were driven out of the town by the mob. In consequence of this, Murat was forced to retire with his soldiers beyond the Ebro, while the province of Asturias rose en masse.

But mobs and undisciplined militia can never stand against regular troops. The Spanish army was defeated, and on the 20th of July young Garcia witnessed the entrance of Joseph Bonaparte into the capital as King of Spain.

That same day, however, brought serious disaster to one of the flying columns which had been sent out in various directions. The Spanish insurgents at once rose in every quarter, and a guerilla warfare was begun which proved more fatal to the French army than regular defeats would have been. Napoleon for the first time had to fight a nation in arms, and Joseph Bonaparte was forced to evacuate Madrid within three weeks of making his royal entry, and to retreat beyond the Ebro, as Murat had done two months before.

Here he was joined by his brother-in-law with 135,000 men, and a rapid advance was made on Madrid, with the inevitable result that the Spanish capital was forced to capitulate, and on December 13 the young Manuel had the excitement of seeing the entry of the great Napoleon into the town at the head of the French troops.

The events of the next three years of the Peninsular War were not witnessed by him, for the place remained in the hands of the French until 1812, when he saw Madrid evacuated by Bonaparte, and occupied on August 12 by Wellington and his troops after the battle of Salamanca.

With his main army the English general now advanced on Burgos, which, however, resisted all his assaults; and the Anglo-Portuguese army had to retire once more into Portugal, while for the last time Joseph returned to the Spanish capital.

In the summer of 1813 Wellington broke up from his quarters, and, marching in a north-easterly direction, attempted to cut off all communication between France and Madrid. The movement completely overthrew the French domination in Spain, and Joseph Bonaparte fled with all the troops he could collect. Wellington followed, and came up with the French army at Vittoria, where he defeated them.

This victory, by which the invaders were driven back into France, was followed by a burst of national enthusiasm. The Spanish guerillas destroyed every isolated French post, and on October 8, 1813, Wellington crossed the French borders with his army.

A few months later Ferdinand VII. was restored to the throne of Spain.

Such were the events through which his native land was passing during the childhood of Manuel Garcia, and which he was able to recall in after life.

What memories and experiences must he have had to pour into the ears of his parents when, in the summer of 1814, he was summoned to join them at Naples, where they had settled two years previously, having been forced to leave Paris owing to the strong feeling against Spain!

MANUEL GARCIA'S FATHER.

CHAPTER III.

NAPLES.

(1814-1816.)

WHEN Manuel Garcia joined his parents in Italy in the summer of 1814, being at the time in his tenth year, he found Naples under the rule of King Murat.

Here he saw for the first time his sister Maria, who was now six years old, while his father he found installed in the position of principal tenor in the chapel choir of King Murat. The elder Garcia had held this post for about two years, having been appointed immediately on his arrival from Paris. Since then he had been devoting himself to a complete study of the art of singing under his friend and teacher, Ansani.

This celebrated tenor was able to hand on to him the Italian vocal traditions of that "Bel Canto" school which had come down from the old Neapolitan maestro, Porpora.

Soon after Manuel came to Italy he was taken by his father to see Ansani, who not only heard him sing, but gave him a few informal lessons. It was a case of winter and spring, for while the pupil was in his tenth year, the teacher was approaching his seventieth. With this fact we are brought face to face with an almost incredible link with the past. Ansani was nearly twenty when Porpora died, in his eighty-second year. A remark which Manuel Garcia once made rather points to the possibility that Ansani may have had a few lessons from Porpora himself. Whether this was absolutely true I know not,—at any rate it may well have been so. Accept the supposition, and those who had the honour of studying under the "centenarian" would at once be placed in a position to say that they were pupils of one whose master had himself received lessons from a man born in 1687. The possibility is a fascinating one.

Giovanni Ansani himself was an interesting personality. Born in Rome about the middle of the eighteenth century, it has been reported that he once met Bach. As, however, the German composer died in the year 1750, about the time that Ansani was still busying himself with the feeding-bottle—or its eighteenth-century equivalent—the story must be regarded with some suspicion, to say the least of it.

After a musical training received in Italy, he sang in various parts of the Continent. Twenty years before the close of the century he made his appearance in London, and at once took the first place. He soon left, however, on account of disputes with Roncaglia.

In 1781 he returned to England, and Dr Burney, who heard him sing in that year, has described him as the sweetest, albeit one of the most powerful, tenors of his generation. He was a spirited actor, and had a full, fine-toned, and commanding voice, while, according to Gervasoni, he had a very rare truth of intonation, great power of expression, and most perfect method both of voice emission and vocalisation. His wife, Maccherini, was also a singer, and