Berlin; but this was never said at Leipsic. No doubt when out of a sympathetic atmosphere, when contending at his desk with the obstinacy of the Berliners, who looked upon him as an interloper, and the stupidity of the English players, many of whom thought him an upstart, he failed sometimes to conciliate the orchestra or to conquer its defects. Yet it is allowed that with the most stubborn materials he wrought wonders in England; and although he was never appreciated at Berlin, he always had the greatest difficulty in escaping. Devrient is probably right when, admitting his excessive irritability at times, he speaks of his conducting when surrounded by those who loved to play as quite perfect. He declares that the way in which he was able to infuse himself into the band was little short of magical, and at times he would leave off in a kind of trance, and listen with his head a little on one side quite rapt with delight at the band itself having become Mendelssohn, and therefore hardly needing Mendelssohn's bâton for the time.

But there are pages in Mendelssohn's life which have never been filled up, and points of interrogation which have never been answered. His relations with his wife Cecile née Jean-Renaud appear to have been tender and satisfactory, and yet her name is hardly ever mentioned in any letter or book of reminiscences which has yet appeared. She seems before her own death to have destroyed all his letters to herself, and with the exception of a few casual, but affectionate

remarks in some letters written very soon after their marriage, Mendelssohn does not allude to her in his published correspondence.

A change, which Devrient himself can only partially account for, seems to have passed over Mendelssohn on his return from England in 1846.

"I became clearly conscious of a change that had come over the sources of his inner life. His blooming youthful joyousness had given place to a fretfulness, a satiety of all earthly things, which reflected everything back from the spirit of former days. Conducting concerts, everything that savoured of business, was an intolerable annoyance to him; he took no longer any pleasure in the conservatorium; he gave over his pianoforte pupils; not one of the young people inspired him with any sympathy; he could not bear to see any of their composi tions."

If there is any explanation of this change beyond disease of the brain, which seems to have been hereditary in the Mendelssohn family, we shall probably not know yet awhile, or indeed until some of his contemporaries, who may have the keys of the enigma in their hands, have passed away.

He never got over the death of his favourite sister Fanny. He went to Interlachen with his family, and worked hard at the education of his children, the unfinished Lorelei and the unfinished Christus. Soon after at Leipsic, working with ever more and more application as he felt the night approaching, he was seized with a fatal pain in his head. A relapse followed.

"On the 5th, I went in the evening to Bendemann, where I hoped to learn the latest tidings from Leipsic. There came Clara Schumann with a letter, weeping; Felix had died yesterday evening, Nov. 4th.”

We must conclude with a few more of Devrient's

own touching words :

"Hensel led me to the corpse, which he had thoughtfully decorated. There lay my beloved friend in a costly coffin, upon cushions of satin, embroidered in tall growing shrubs, and covered with wreaths of flowers and laurels. He looked much aged, but recalled to me the expression of the boy as I had first seen him. Where my hand had so often stroked the long brown locks, and the burning brow of the boy, I now touched the marble forehead of the man. This span of time in my remembrance encloses the whole of happy youth in one perfect and indelible thought."

ORATORIO OF ELIJAH.

FIRST PART.

NEXT to the MESSIAH, the ELIJAH is the most popular oratorio in England. It is shorter and more dramatic than Handel's masterpiece, less theological than Spohr's Last Judgment, and less didactic than the wondrous Passion Music of Sebastien Bach. Thus, whilst the subject-matter of the Elijah is full of the most stirring incidents, its artistic form is sufficiently brief to rivet the attention of even an uncultivated audience from the first recitative down to the last chorus. No man ever wrote more in the presence of his public and less in the seclusion of his study than Mendelssohn, and in no other work has he so finely calculated the capacities of the ordinary music-loving mind, and so richly poured forth treasures which the most experienced musician will find, if not inexhaustible, yet always perfect.

The strange and majestic figure of the "Prodigiosus Thesbites," as he is called in the Acta Sanctorum, is ushered in by four solemn but not violent trumpet blasts a mode of appeal to the imagination of the audience which a second time accompanies the appearance of Elijah.

The northern kingdom of Israel under Ahab, in the luxury of its magnificent cities of Jezreel and Samaria, had forgotten the God who had led the wandering tribes like sheep through the deserts of Sinai. Jezebel, the Sidonian queen, had not only persecuted the prophets of the true God, but had superseded the Jewish worship of holiness and purity with the seductive idolatry of power and passion. On every high hill flamed the pagan sacrifices, and wild, licentious orgies had penetrated even into the sanctuary of Israel and taken the place of Jehovah's pure and elevating ritual. The harvest of sin seemed ripe, the time was near at hand, the hearts of the seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal cried aloud from the dens and caves of the earth, and the God of righteousness at last arose to confound the rebellious nation with famine and drought. Alone, the man of the desert, clothed in a rough sheepskin and wearing a leathern girdle about his loins, with the suddenness of an apparition confronted the idolatrous Ahab, and pronounced the curse of drought upon the streams and valleys of the land.

The opening prelude indicates the gradual awakening of the nation to the sense of a new calamity. Less

and less water, the wells fast drying up, the routine of life gradually affected, the cattle fainting on the highways, the people vainly seeking for relief, the impatient and irritable chafing of the sufferers at the consequences of a curse as yet but half realized; such is the purport of the first subject. The second begins with a crescendo of semiquavers, indicating very powerfully the approach of a more intense anguish. Still the first phrase of impatience is woven into this new subject as an under-current, and the movement is then carried on with increasing vehemence until impatience rising to fury, fury sinks at last into the wild impotence of despair, which culminates in the desperate cry of "Help, Lord!" wrung from the whole body of the apostate people.

After the first three passionate shouts the solid business of the first chorus begins, with a chromatic phrase of mournful and tender beauty taken up gently and distinctly by each part-"The harvest is over, the summer days are gone, no power cometh to help!" The sorrow goes on rocking itself into a calm and almost pensive mood, when suddenly a change of emotion occurs with the words, "Will then the Lord be no more God in Zion?" It is one of those abrupt and magical inspirations which Mendelssohn often employs to bind together the different sections of his choruses; anon the old plaintive phrase is woven in with a newly-developed meaning; the heavy grief is rapidly yielding to a stern and bitter feeling in the contemplation of certain special incidents of the