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of the Elgin marbles without a certain degree of serious study of the laws of the sculptor's art. What uncultured mind ever could perceive the loveliness of the "Odyssey," or of Wordsworth's "Ode on Immortality," or of the "In Memoriam ?"

But granting the presence of the natural musical capacity properly cultivated, and the intelligence, the emotional susceptibility and the healthy activity of the listener, then I say that in those works which unite profound elaboration to intense tunefulness, he finds an expression of all that is best and noblest in his nature, and is lifted into a region of thought and feeling where this present existence seems for the moment to have vanished away. And among such works, the Mass in B Minor stands pre-eminent. It is to the greatest choral writings of other composers what the marbles of the Parthenon are to all other sculpture, and what Shakespeare is to all other poets. Those who look for this preeminence in its songs will be disappointed, admirable as they are. in the succession of its gigantic choruses that it leaves all other music behind, as comparatively slight and inexpressive. They have all the brilliant and masterly clearness of Handel's best choruses, all his tunefulness and propriety of expression; but they excel them in a boundless richness of elaboration and development, in a union of complication and multitudinousness of detail with a perfect unity and simplicity of general effect, and in a power of inventing and working out of orchestral accompaniment which Handel, great above all others, never achieved.

It is

The result is what I can only describe by the words magnificence and splendour. It is not the same thing as the tenderness and graceful beauty and brilliancy of Mozart, nor the passionate power and almost fierce intensity of Beethoven. We wonder how any such combination of elaboration and tune ever came forth from the brain of one man ; just as, when we look up at the stars, we are overwhelmed with a sense of mingled order and loveliness, or as the sight of a superb sunset affects us with a sense of mingled amazement and joy. One feeling, too, is aroused by these choruses to a degree which I imagine is all their own; and that is, a sense of exultation. "I never thought," one says to oneself, as the mighty torrent of sound streams onwards, "that humanity could find a tongue so eloquent." We many of us know what is that strange sensation of excitement and consciousness of hidden power, together with a kind of feeling as if the triviality of life was for the moment ended, which is at times kindled in us by a few lines of poetry, or a few words in prose; and just such, I venture to assure the nonmusical thinker who has given me his attention through these few pages, is the effect of these transcendent choruses; and I am confident that there are thousands and tens of thousands, even in this comparatively unmusical England, who, if they could hear them, would confess that I have not, in what I have said, been guilty of one word of exaggeration.

C.

734

The Atonement of Leam Dundas.

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IN HIS RIGHT MIND.

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sweet, as some good, careless fellows do.

OTHING is easier to a

clever woman than to catch a heart at the rebound. Samson, blind and sorrowful, lays his weary head in the lap of that watchful Delilah who has been biding her time, knowing that it would come; and when he wakes up again he finds his locks shorn and his strength, with his freedom, gone. Then it is too late. Sorrow, revolt, complaint all are of no avail. He has nothing for it but to accept the irremediable quietly, and sleep on, determined to find his dreams pleasant and his pillow Others, unfortunately for

themselves, resent the mistake that they have made and the snare into which they have fallen, and cannot, do what they will, reconcile themselves to their disaster or refrain from shaking their chains dismally. Adelaide had been Edgar's Delilah; watchful, patient, respectable. She had bided her time and waited; and now she was reaping her reward. Samson had delivered himself into her hand, and she had bound him with fetters stronger than green withes. The decisive words had been spoken; the needful preliminaries arranged; and a few days now would see the great aim of her life fulfilled, and the crowning stone flung on the cairn of the delusive past. It was a proud moment for her; and all the more in that she owed her success solely to her own tact and determination; for the very fitness of things which had helped to bring this marriage about had been the fitness which she herself had created.

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There was to be no vulgar parade, no noisy rejoicing at this wedding between the owner of the Hill and the rector's daughter; only simple arrangements of that solid magnificence and proud exclusiveness which are so dear to English county families; and which assort better with their condition than the more noisy demonstrations, the more showy finery of the town-bred rich. Besides, though the marriage was one in every way satisfactory, judging by outside facts-the only measuringtape held by the world-it had its own secret history which did not agree with a very demonstrative ceremonial; and Adelaide was wise, though she was ambitious. She was content to have and to hold that which she had so long desired, without laying too much stress on the manner of assignment. To be installed mistress of the Hill, and head of the society for ten miles round, were the two clauses in the marriage lines which were to the real purpose. Whether she had one bridesmaid or a dozen, and whether her father gave a breakfast to ten guests or a hundred, were adventitious circumstances not affecting the central fact. And if we have that central fact set square and firm, who in his senses troubles himself about the fringe of adventitious circumstance? When we are buying a house we look to the beams and the walls, not to the Banksia roses up the porch or to the volute of the cornice.

The marriage between these two persons so manifestly made for each other had not been arranged in a dark corner, but neither had it been paraded in broad day or published at the market-cross. If there was no bond of secrecy to be kept, no blare of trumpets had been sounded. It was quietly announced now to one now to another, as it might chance; and thus filtered noiselessly through the place and beyond, till it came at last to Alick Corfield, down at Monk Grange, doing his best to lift up Leam in her own esteem by his devotion, and to soften the intenser bitterness of her life by the unchanging sweetness of his love.

Here again his principles and his affection, his conscience and his heart, came into collision. Should he tell her of this marriage? She ought to know must know some day-but he shrank from the painful task of enlightening her. Good and true in soul as he was, he was weak where his affections were concerned. He had been bred on a wrong plan for the practice of sharp mental surgery, and though capable of suffering martyrdom on his own account, was incapable of giving pain to others-least of all to those whom he loved.

Wherefore he held his peace; and Leam was still ignorant of the fact that Edgar Harrowby was, as North Aston phrased it, in his right mind at last, and about to marry Adelaide Birkett, as he ought to have done when he first came home. Sufficient to the day, he thought. Leam's health had run down too much to make it advisable to give her any kind of shock, and it was best to let her present wounds heal before others were inflicted. Let her then rest in peace and blessed unconsciousness of the evil to come, till it could be no longer warded off! If he was doing wrong not to tell her, he would bear the burden on his own soul—as he

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