conjuring has brought things out of his house
that were never in it; and only trade-conjuring
can replace those things that were once really
there.

MEMORY.
A WAIL of a child at midnight,
  The chime of a minster-bell,
The sorrowful moan of a sorrowing soul,
  And the sound of a passing knell.

An old worn book, on a corner shelf,
  And a spray of faded yew,
A locket with hair all golden and fair
  And a ribbon of faded blue.

A needle-case, both empty and old,
  And a case with hidden spring,
Wherein two golden watch-keys lie,
  A heart—and a wedding-ring.

I take the book from the corner shelf,
  And the ribbon of faded blue,
And before me stands the form I lov'd,
  With hair of a golden hue.

And I gaze so long in those earnest eyes,
  That my soul grows weak with pain,
Then she fades away—and I gently lay
  The old book down again.

OUR EYE-WITNESS WITH HANDEL.

A SMITH'S anvil, rusty and broken.

An old jingling spinet, or harpsichord, brass
bound, and with a pious Latin inscription on
its lid—" Donum Dei."

What of these things?

A summer evening—a country church. The
door is left half open, and the fresh warm air
invades the building, and, stealing in, remon-
strates gently with the somewhat earthy
atmosphere of the place, and the close but not
unpleasant odour of old pews, and leather binding
of huge Bibles and Prayer-books. " These
smells are not so bad," says the sweet pure air,
"but I am better—so let me in."

Through the open door, borne in upon this
perfumed air, come sounds that breathe of
peace. The sound of rustling leaves that quiver
in the summer breeze and rattle pleasantly
against each other, and some against the old
church windows. The sound of distant cattle,
of sparrows in the church roof, of the cuckoo
far away, of rooks subsiding for the night in the
elm-trees near at hand. Is this all? No, there
is one sound more that seems to bind the rest
together, and measure out the time to them—a
sound that, though it tells of labour, gives
yet an added measure of repose to the rest of
him who listens to it, a sound clear as a bell,
and true in time as the progress of the village
clock. It comes from the blacksmith's hammer
ringing on the anvil, and every inch of air
through which that sound must pass adds its
tribute of tune as the note goes by, and sends
it into the church at last in matchless ringing
melody.

And how does it happen that the church door
is open to admit it at such a time as this?
There is no priest in the building, no service
going on. Yes, there is a priest of Heaven's
choir in the place, and a service going on, such
as men are placed in this world to do. For the
German gentleman who plays upon the organ
has come there to practise, and is sitting in the
church alone.

The German gentleman has come to practise,
and yet the organ is silent, and no sweeping
wail of harmony is heard to challenge those
evening sounds with which the air is loaded.
Why, how is this? The German gentleman is
idle. Let us softly draw aside the curtain of
the organ-loft and look.

The German gentleman is seated before the
organ in an attitude of perfect rest. He stirs
not, except that now and then the fingers of one
hand pass over certain of the keys, touching
them lightly, but not pressing them down. His
eyes are turned towards the light—it is to the
light that men look when their work is right and
honest, and when they would drink in more force
for their labour. His eyes are turned to the
sky, but he sees not what he looks at. His ears
are at work and not his eyes—he is listening and
not looking. Listening—and to what? Is it
to the cawing of the rooks, or the song of the
birds, or the rustling whisper of the leaves. He
is listening to none of these. He hears them,
indeed, but only as we faintly hear the
accompaniment to a lovely song. He is listening to
that other sound of the smith's hammer falling
on the anvil, and as the notes drop singly on
his ear he shapes them into a chord of melody
that has lived for a hundred years and more, and
gained, with every added year of life, an added
ring of glory.

That smith was the Harmonious Blacksmith,
and the German gentleman was Handel.

From this passage of quiet pastoral life, from
this episode of a country church and a village
organist, let us now turn to a widely different
scene. The Handel Festival is in all its glory.
The sun is blazing down on the glass roof of the
Crystal Palace, glancing among the leaves of
the shrubs, penetrating to the glittering scales
of the gold fish in the water, extracting more
and more wealth of overpowering perfume from
the orange-trees, and finally descending in a
genial glow upon the head of him who writes
these lines, or in other words, upon the Eye-
witness.

He has examined the smith's anvil spoken
of at the beginning of this report, and which
was appropriately brought to the Crystal Palace
for the Handel Festival. He has heard the
faint tinkling note of the harpsichord at which
Handel composed, exhibited in the Handel
Court, and he now proceeds to take the
place assigned to him in the building, and
prepares to listen to the music, which, beginning
at the faint source of that poor spinet, has now
reached its full development in an orchestra,
the force and number of whose instruments
would almost extort an echo from the very sky
itself.

From the seats that rise on an incline,