intolerable sunshine, and the nights full of the pitiless stars? Her village duties or town visits are done. Perchance neither have any attractions for her. She has read till her head aches; but all the reading leads to nothing. She has worked till her fingers ache; but what is the work good for when it is done? To set women to do the things which some people suppose are the only things fit for them to do, is often like setting the steam-hammer to knock pins into a board. The skilful and ingenious operation leaves them dissatisfied or listless, or makes them, by a kind of reaction, frivolous, wicked, and exaggerated caricatures of what God intended them to be. Some outlet is wanted. Control is good, but at a certain point control becomes something very much like paralysis. The steamhammer, as it contemplates the everlasting pin's head, cannot help feeling that if some day, when the steam was on, it might give one good smashing blow, it would feel all the better for it. To women-and how many thousands are there in our placid modern drawing-rooms-who feel like this, music comes with a power of relief and a gentle grace of ministration little short of supernatural.

That girl who sings to herself her favourite songs of Schubert, Mendelssohn, or Schumann, sings more than a song: it is her own plaint of suffering floating away on the wings of melody. That poor lonely little sorrower, hardly more than a child, who sits dreaming at her piano, whilst her fingers, caressing the

deliciously cool ivory keys, glide through a weird nocturne of Chopin, is playing no mere study or set piece. Ah, what heavy burden seems lifted up, and borne away in the dusk? Her eyes are half closed— her heart is far away; she dreams a dream as the long, yellow light fades in the west, and the wet vine-leaves tremble outside to the nestling birds; the angel of music has come down; she has poured into his ear the tale which she will confide to no one else, and the "restless, unsatisfied longing" has passed; for one sweet moment the cup of life seems full-she raises it to her trembling lips. What if it is only a dream—a dream of comfort sent by music? Who will say she is not the better for it ? She has been taken away from the commonplaceness and dulness of life-from the old books in the study, and the familiar faces in the schoolroom, and the people in the streets; she has been alone with herself, but not fretting or brooding-alone with herself and the minstrel spirit. Blessed recreation, that brings back freshness to the tired life and buoyancy to the heavy heart! Happy rain of tears and stormy wind of sighs sweeping the sky clear, showing once more the deep blue heaven of the soul beyond! Let no one say that the moral effects of music are small or insignificant. That domestic and long-suffering instrument, the cottage piano, has probably done more to sweeten existence and bring peace and happiness to families in general, and to young women in particular, than all the homilies on the domestic virtues ever yet penned.

and

IX.

THE social effects of music would be a very interesting subject of discussion; but they lie a little outside the purpose of our present book. In writing on a subject so extremely fertile as music, it is almost impossible not to diverge at times into pleasant byways and unexplored paths. I have now only space for a few remarks on the moral effects of sacred music upon the listener. Those who attend the performances of the Sacred Harmonic Society at Exeter Hall and the other great musical festivals in England, need not be told that almost all the greatest composers have found, in the sacred cantata or oratorio, a form of art capable of expressing the noblest progressions of the religious sentiment in the highest planes of emotion. Those

who have been familiar with the Bible from childhood are apt to grow insensible to the majestic beauty of its style, to the frequently inspired level of its ideas, and the subtle charm of its diction. Some day they may chance suddenly to read a passage of it in French or German, and the simple novelty of form will wonderfully arrest their attention and kindle their emotion. But this is nothing compared with the effect which is produced by arranging the magnificent episodes of Scripture in a dramatic-not operatic-form, and translating their emotional significance into the universal language of music. In the oratorio, unlike the opera, there is nothing absurd or outré. The fact of

Elijah standing before us in a well-trimmed moustache and clean kid gloves does not in the least shock our sense of propriety, because no impersonation is attempted. The singers are there, not to personate character, but to help us to realize the force and procession of certain emotions through which the characters in the sacred drama are supposed to pass. By doing this, and no more, we attempt the possible, and succeed. A good deal depends upon the libretto. Mendelssohn was himself ever a loving and reverent student of the Bible. He selected and arranged in great measure the words of his own oratorios; and so admirably has he entered into the spirit of his work, that it is difficult to listen to the Elijah or St. Paul, with the words before us, without each time receiving some new impression of the depth and sublimity of those characters, whose figures at this distance of time stand out prominently among all the prophets of the Old and New Testaments. I have written so much elsewhere upon oratorios, that I willingly, without further preamble, pass on to congregational singing.

In all times men and women have shown a strong disposition to express their praises and lamentations by what for some better term may be called a kind of howling or wailing. This method may not be thought very musical or hymn-like. Nevertheless, all such vocal expressions are actual attempts to utter deep feeling through appropriate channels of sound. When

properly disciplined and elaborated, that mode of utterance becomes devotional and congregational singing. The Lollards, who according to some took their name from lullen, "to sing," found in hymn tunes and chants a great medium for expressing the rush of a new religious life upon their spirits, and within the last hundred years the Methodist hymns have served a like purpose. No doubt upon entering a chapel where the congregation were singing, heart and soul, some easily-learned and well-known hymn, the hearer was liable to be caught by the devotional impetuosity thus expressed through musical sound; and, indeed, no greater bond of worship could be devised than hymn tunes suited to the capacities and tastes of the people. Mr. Ward Beecher, in his own peculiar vein, has lately preached a very eloquent sermon to his congregation upon this subject, and we need make no apology for presenting our readers with the following extract to the point :—

Singing is that natural method by which thoughts are reduced to feeling, more easily, more surely, and more universally than by any other. You are conscious when you go to an earnest meeting, for instance, that, while hymns are being sung and you listen to them, your heart is, as it were, loosened, and there comes out of those hymns to you a realization of the truth such as you never had before. There is a pleading element, there is a sense of humiliation of heart, there is a poignant realization of sin and its guiltiness, there is a yearning for a brighter life in a hymn which you do not find in your closet; and, in singing, you come into sympathy with the truth as you perhaps never do under the preaching of a discourse. There is a provision made in singing for the development of almost every phase of Christian experience. Singing also has a wonderful effect upon those feelings which we wish to restrain. All are not alike susceptible; but all are suscep