The young Consuelo lives as a child the life of a beggar. Her youth is
passed in the lowest circumstances of the streets of Venice. She
brings the more pertinacious fire of Spanish blood to be fostered by
the cheerful airs of Italy. A vague sense of the benefits to be
derived, from such mingling of various influences, in the formation of
a character, is to be discerned in several works of art now, when men
are really wishing to become citizens of the world, though old habits
still interfere on every side with so noble a development.
Nothing can be more charming than the first volume, which describes
the young girl amid the common life of Venice. It is sunny, open, and
romantic as the place. The beauty of her voice, when a little
singing-girl in the streets, arrested the attention of a really great
and severe master, Porpora, who educated her to music. In this she
finds the vent and the echo for her higher self. Her affections are
fixed on a young companion, an unworthy object, but she does not know
him to be so. She judges from her own candid soul, that all must be
good, and derives from the tie, for a while, the fostering influences
which love alone has for genius.
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