illusion of Beethoven's "Pastoral" vanishes with the appearance of a real cuckoo; and even Mendelssohn must disturb with what can hardly be anything but a live donkey the enchantment of "A Midsummer Night's Dream!" But with all abatements, the music of Purcell, which after two hundred years has still the power to charm, bears a signal witness to the force and originality of his genius. Purcell died in his thirtyeighth year, 1696.

Handel came to England in 1710. The year 1706 is the turning-point in his musical history. In that year he visited Naples, and met Scarlatti, Porpora, and Corelli. It was to him a period of rapid assimilation. With one stride he reached the front rank, and felt that henceforth no musician alive could teach him anything. He died in 1759, aged seventy-four. There can be no doubt that Handel, by his single might, greatly advanced music in all its branches; but his action is far more remarkable on vocal than on instrumental music. Modern instrumental music is simply the most extraordinary art-development which the world has ever seen. It can only be compared to the perfection reached so suddenly, after a certain point, by the Greek drama. But the stride from Corelli to Beethoven was too great even for the giant Handel; and yet the men who completed that stride were Handel's contemporaries. Handel was forty-seven when Haydn was born, and Mozart was in his third year when Handel died Musically, how many cen

turies does Handel seem to us behind modern music! yet we can all but join hands with him; and the musical enthusiast is filled with a certain awe when he thinks that men are still alive (1871) who may have listened to Mozart, and conversed with the venerable Haydn.

We are

T may sound like an anachronism to call Handel a contemporary; and yet he seems so constantly present with us, that at times we can hardly believe that he has passed away. surrounded by his effigies; no living face is more familiar-no modern minstrel more beloved than he who has now lain quietly in the great Abbey for some one hundred and ten years.

A few hours after death, the sculptor Roubiliac took a cast of his face: that dead face made alive again,

and wrought into imperishable marble, is indeed the very face of Handel. There, towering above his tomb, towering, too, above the passing generations of men, he seems to accept their homage benignly, like a god, whilst he himself stands wrapt from the "fickle and the frail," and "moulded in colossal calm."

The frequenters of Exeter Hall are familiar with another figure of him clothed in a long robe, with the legs crossed, and holding a lyre in his hand. A marble bust of the same date (1738) is at the Foundling Hospital. The head is shaven and crowned with a sort of turban cap; the face is irascible and highly characteristic. Casts of this bust have been multiplied through the land, and can be easily obtained.

The original of what is perhaps the best known of all (1758) is in the Queen's private apartments at Windsor. The little china bust sold at all music shops is a fair copy; on either side of the face falls down a voluminous wig elaborately wrought. The sculptor seems to have felt he could no more dare to treat that wig lightly than some other persons whom we shall have to refer to by-and-by.

There are more than fifty known pictures of Handel, and the best of them happens to be also the best known. It is by T. Hudson, signed "1756 A," at Gopsall, the seat of his remarkable friend, Charles Jennens. Handel is seated in full gorgeous costume of the period, with sword, shot-silk breeches, and coat gorge de pigeon, embroidered with gold. The face is noble in its repose; a touch of kindly benevolence

plays about the finely-shaped mouth; overy trace of angry emotion seems to have died out; yet the lines of age that are somewhat marked do not rob the countenance of its strength. The great master wears the mellow dignity of years without weakness or austerity. In that wonderful collection of pictures lately exhibited at the South Kensington Museum, the oftenrecurring face and figure of Handel-young, middleaged, and old-life-size, full figure, head and shoulders, standing up, and sitting down-filled us with the sense of one who had left a deep and yet bewildering impression upon his own age. The portraits were not only different in look, but even in features. The same face has been subjected to the minute photographic treatment of Denner, and the robust handling of Wolfand, who makes the composer fat, rosy, and in excellent condition. There are few collectors of prints who have not a lithograph, woodcut, or line engraving of him. He is exposed in every second-hand print-shop, still hangs on the walls of many old nook-and-corner houses in London, or lies buried in unnumbered portfolios throughout England.

With such memories fresh in our minds, and with the melodious thunders of the great Festival constantly ringing in our ears, let us attempt to trace once more the history of Handel's life, and hang another wreath upon the monument of his imperishable fame.

Händel or Handel (George Frederic) was born at Halle, on the Saale, in the duchy of Magdeburg,