opposite the orchestra and at the furthest extremity
of the transept from it, your Eye-witness looked
over the vast space between him and the
musicians, and was impressed to speechlessness by
the extraordinary scene before him. It was like
being upon a hill and looking over a plain of
flowers. Bonnets of every shade, but chiefly of
white, with tender mixture of brighter colour in
ribbons or other adornment, all by the vast
numbers and by the grouping of chance arranged
in lovely agreement and concord of tint, and
made, perhaps, to sparkle all the more by the
black admixture of men's heads scattered about
among them. Bonnets near, bonnets far off;
back views of bonnets close at hand, their owners
looking down in study of programmes or books
of words, so that one saw disastrously near the
backs of lovely necks that looked like cream,
and heavy lumps of hair, so dexterously plaited,
so mercilessly entwined, so purely clean, so
shaded with soft pent-house muslin, adorned
with such culture and cleansing of each separate
hair, that when the selection from Samson came,
one was almost ready to excuse the strong
man for falling a victim to charms, which those
can resist alone whose hearts are girt about
with threefold brass of heroism, or else with the
ice of a base insensibility.

Acres of bonnets—and, underneath each one
of them, the separate cares, desires, hopes and
fears, that make up each one's own identity.
Each one responsible; each one with power to
add to the happiness or misery of many others.
Bonnets upon foolish heads, upon vain heads,
upon peevish heads, upon dissatisfied heads,
upon envious heads, upon disappointed heads,
upon petted heads, upon neglected heads.
Bonnets upon wise heads, upon humble heads (not
many these), upon cheerful heads, upon
contented heads, upon the heads of ladies who
write; ladies who are musical, ladies who act,
ladies who paint, ladies (bless them!) who can do
none of these things, ladies who rule, ladies who
submit, ladies who can conduct a household
well, ladies who can do the same ill, ladies
who come to hear the music, ladies who come
to show themselves—bonnets diminishing in the
vast distance, till the furthest off are not so
large as the lily of the valley's smallest bud,
upon those that are near at hand, and some that
are further still and can hardly be seen at all.

Immediately about and around the position
occupied by your Eye-witness were to be found
specimens of almost all the different classes of
visitors of which a musical audience is
composed. Here were Germans in endless
numbers. Grave men, these, with light hair and
moustache, with long legs and short frock-coats.
Men who brought books of the music with
them, and checked it off as it advanced. Here,
too, were provincial clergymen, numbers of
choral societies, who had large families of
daughters plainly dressed, and every one
provided with the score, to see that it was all done
correctly and properly. Knowing people these
to a fault, spectacled to excess; good subjects,
though, who will never upset dynasties or join
in revolutions; people who get up Handel
among themselves, and are very good, and
happy, and uninteresting. Here, too, were the
fashionable clergy—gentlemen with hair parted
at the back, with well-made clothes, with lavender
gloves, men who take pupils, and who become
absent and excited when a bishop comes in with
a lady on his arm, who is got up in the quietest
(and most expensive) of costumes, who goes
about to district meetings, and is very humble
to the poor, and prouder in her heart than even
her lordly husband, and he is not humble
altogether either. Here, too, are the honest, open-
mouthed, staring part of the public, who don't
know a polka from a chant, but have come to
stare, and because their next-door neighbours,
who are here, would triumph over them if they
stopped at home; and here, also, were some of
the men who came down in the same train with
your Eye-witness, and who brought their gloves
wrapped up in paper, and put them on in the
carriage; and here is Mr. Costa, advancing to
his place in the orchestra, looking no bigger in
the distance than an ant creeping along the side
of a molehill, and received, as well he may be,
with a storm of approbation.

Coming early in the day, when all one's faculties
were fresh and unjaded; coming upon a
brain not fagged with a day's work, as it
generally is, when at operas or night concerts
the music will hardly bite upon the ears' palate
at all; coming in the full splendour of its own
magnificence, and set off by every vocal and
instrumental aid that could heighten the glory of
its loveliness; the Te Deum of the great German
composer seemed to your Eye-witness the greatest
work he had ever heard, and the time which it
occupied, which was not inconsiderable, went
by unnoticed, like the time we pass in sleep, or
in such happy labour as will make the hours
seem as minutes.

The scale, too, of everything about was so
grand. The mighty orchestra, the rushing
wind of the stringed instruments, the outcry of
that army of brass, the pyramid of drums, at a
distance so great that the eye saw them struck
the fraction of a moment before the sound
reached the ear, the black chorus of the men,
and most beautiful of all, and never to be
forgotten, the distant women's choir—never to be
forgotten in the perfection of its colour, a
combination of the rich, warm white of the dresses, of
the various ribbons, primrose colour, rose, marsh-
mallow, or apple-green, and, more glorious than
all, the great pervading hue of a thousand
women's faces. The rising of this choir to sing, and
its sinking down again when, during solo parts, its
services were not required, were, in the gentle
uniformity of the action spread over so large a
surface, infinitely gratifying to the eye, and
inexpressibly touching and gracious. Indeed, the
eye found a resting-place in that part of the
orchestra from which it did not seek to wander,
and was perfectly satisfied with what it saw, as
the ear was with what it heard.

The eye requires to be thus comforted in the
Crystal Palace, for surely the effect of the