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16 where they spoke all languages and especially the French tongue, it was in continual relationship with both England and Italy, and particularly with Venice, which constituted for it a model for emulatation. It was by way of Hamburg that the English ideas were circulated in Germany. It was there where the first German newspapers appeared, In the time of Handel, Hamburg shared with Leipzig the intellectual prestige of Germany, There was no other place in Germany where music was held in such high esteem. The artists there hobnobbed with the rich merchants. Christoph Bernhart, pupil of Schütz, had founded there a celebrated Collegium Musicum, a Society of Musicians, and started there in 1677-8 the first theatre of German Opera. It was not a princely opera open only to those invited by the prince, but a public opera, popular in spirit and in prices. It was the example of Italy, notably that of Venice, which called forth this foundation, but the spirits of the two theatres were very different. Whilst that of Venice satisfied itself with fantastic melodramas, curiously devised from the ancient mythology and history, the Hamburg Opera retained, despite the grossness of taste and licentiousness of manners, an old religious