Lower Saxony. The date on his tomb in Westminster Abbey is a mistake (Feb. 23, 1684); his real birthday is Feb. 23, 1685. Germany was not then the great musical country which it has since become, and was chiefly engaged in cultivating at second-hand the flowers of Italian music, which grew pale enough beneath those alien skies. The Italian maestro might be looked upon with some respect, but the native artist was not yet considered a prophet in his own country. Even eighty years later Mozart and Haydn were treated like lacqueys. "Music," remarked Handel's father, about a hundred and seventy years ago, "is an elegant art and fine amusement, but as an occupation it hath little dignity, having for its object nothing better than mere entertainment and pleasure.”

No wonder the boy Handel, who, from his earliest childhood, seems to have been passionately fond of sweet sounds, encountered opposition and disappointment in his early musical endeavours. He was to go to no concerts, not even to a public school, for fear he should learn the gamut. He must be taught Latin at home, and become a good doctor, like his father; and leave the divine art to Italian fiddlers and French mountebanks. But up in a little garret the child of seven years, perhaps with the connivance of his nurse or his mother, had hidden a dumb spinet-even at night the faint tinkling could not be heard down below-and in stolen hours, without assistance of any kind, we are told the boy taught himself to play.

By-and-by Father Handel has a mind to visit another son in the service of the Duke of SaxeWeissenfels, and little George runs after the carriage, and begs so hard to go, that at last he is taken to the ducal palace. But he soon turns out to be an enfant terrible to his poor old father. He is caught playing the chapel organ, and is brought up before the duke, trembling more, no doubt, at his father than at the duke, who has heard him, and now pats him on the back with "bravo!" Then, turning to his enraged and afflicted parent, he tells him that his son is a genius, and must not be snubbed any more. The boy's fear is now exchanged for the wildest delight, and the father's rage is quickly followed by astonish

Handel would often tell the story in after years; and he never forgot the duke, the kindest, because the earliest of his benefactors.

From this moment fortune seemed to smile upon him, and his early career exhibits a combination of circumstances wonderfully favourable to the orderly development of his genius. Severe training, patronage, and encouragement, ardent friendship, the constant society of the first composers, wholesome rivalry, and regular orchestral practice-all seem to be suddenly poured upon him out of Fortune's great Horn of Plenty. As the favourite pupil of the great Halle organist, Zachau, he analyzes at the outset very nearly the whole existing mass of German and Italian music, and is set to write a cantata or motet once a week. At last the good Zachau has not the conscience to put him

through any more fugues; tells him with kindly pride that he already knows more than his master, and advises him to go to Berlin, and study the opera school, under the auspices of the Elector of Brandenburg. Attilio Ariosti and Bononcini were then the favourite composers. The first received Handel with open arms; but the second scowled at him from the beginning, and determining to put the conceited boy's powers to the test, composed an elaborate piece, which he challenged him to play at sight. Handel played it off like any other piece, and from that hour Bononcini, who had a bad disposition, but excellent brains, treated the boy with the hatred of a rival, but with the respect due to an equal.

Dr. Handel's failing health brought George Frederic back to Halle. In 1697 the old man died, leaving his family ill provided for, and young Handel was thus driven into a course of immediate, though somewhat dry industry. He descended into the ranks, and became an occasional second violin ripieno at the Hamburg opera-house. As he played little, and badly, the band soon began to sneer at an artist who could hardly earn his salt; but one day the harpsichordist (the principal person in the orchestra) being absent, Handel, then about nineteen, laid his fiddle aside, sat down in the maestro's place, and finished by conducting the rehearsal with such ability, that the whole orchestra broke into loud applause. About this time Handel received an offer of marriage. He might

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be organist of Lubeck if he would take the daughter of the retiring organist along with the organ. went down with his friend Mattheson, and Mattheson appears to have been offered the same terms. Something, however, did not suit-whether it was the organ, or the daughter, or the salary, we are not told; but both the young men returned in single blessedness to Hamburg.

Handel was never married; and perhaps he felt it would be neither wise nor generous to accept as a gift what he had not asked for, and did not want. The rivals in unrequited affection were also rivals in music: both Mattheson and Handel composed operas for the Hamburg opera. They had not come to blows over love, but what love could not do, music did, and the two, who had probably laughed heartily together at the maid of Lubeck, found themselves soon after with drawn swords in front of the theatre, surrounded by a circle of friends and admirers. They fought, as young men will fight in Germany to this day, for the merest trifles. Mattheson's rapier struck Handel on the bosom, but the point shivered on a great brass button; a distinguished councillor of the town then stepped in, and gravely declaring that the claims of honour were satisfied, called on the combatants to desist, and "on the 30th of the same month," writes Mattheson, "I had the pleasure of having Handel to dine with me, and we were better friends than. ever."

The mind of genius in its early stages is habitually

gloomy, and dark tales of crime and sorrow often possess irresistible attractions for the happiest and most innocent of men. Shakspeare early painted the tragedy of Lucrece, and the death of Adonis; Schiller first made his mark with "The Robbers; "Goethe with the "Sorrows of Werther; " Schubert, when a mere boy, wrote the "Parricide" and a " Corpse Fantasia." We shall, therefore, not be surprised to learn that Handel's first opera, Almira, turns on the misfortunes of a dethroned queen; whilst his second, Nero, is, as the prospectus briefly explains, intended to show how "Love" is "obtained by Blood and Murder."

Handel, not content with manufacturing Italian operas in Germany, had, in common with every other musician of that day, a strong desire to visit Italy itself, the great seat of musical learning. With singular independence, he refused the offers of Prince Gaston de' Medici to send him; but by working hard with his pupils he soon got together money enough to go at his own expense. In the month of July, 1706, being twenty-one years old, he first entered Florence.

In that beautiful city, where the flowers seem to come so early and linger so late, the German musician stayed, under the auspices of the Grand Duke, until Christmas. Equal to Venice as a great centre of art revival in Italy, with its strange octagonal dome, its matchless Giotto campanile of black and white marble,

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