imported schemes of Mainzer, Naegeli, Wilhem,
or some methods of their own, broke out into
a sudden activity, warranted by the number of
those who crowded to them for instruction.
There was, of course, some empiricism in the
royal promises of the projectors—no lack of
controversy, criticism, and recrimination among
those recommending rival methods,—and a brisk
outbreak of that false fashionable sympathy,
which is sure, more or less, to be followed by
collapse;—but the amount of good done, and
knowledge spread, and interest excited, is not
to be over-estimated. The same tale was told
on every side, in every world of society throughout
the kingdom. And the result is, that
whereas London was of old perforce indebted
to the sweet singers of Lancashire when a
chorus was wanted, it has now its own
thousands of singers apt and able to take part in
any celebration which may be preparing. The
question has come to be one of picking and
choosing. And remarkable it is, to have seen
how, by the diffusion of cultivation, the quality
of the material has been affected. Though the
North still retains prominence in the natural
richness of its vocal tone, the vast improvement
in every other district is not to be
overlooked; a fact partly to be ascribed to the
widening of the ranks of the amateurs, which
necessarily must have its refining influences.
Certain it is, that in the Eastern Counties
they sing no longer with vowels twisted out
betwixt closed teeth—that beneath the sound
of Bow Bells, the cockney twang is to be heard
no more. Though the Germans shake their
heads and know better, there is no help for it!
The English are now a great singing people.

Then, progress has come in the midst of much
foppery and false endeavour, from what may be
called the ecclesiologists; the same who have
taken art and ceremonial, as connected with our
national religion, into over-care. With the
excess of their theories and practices however
(if excess there has been) we have nothing to
do here. They have meanwhile, no doubt, most
essentially raised the tone of parochial singing,
and the taste for sacred music throughout
England. There is now hardly a cathedral in
which some great assemblage of local voices is
not annually held; and, to meet the uses of
these gatherings, a school of simple and broad
composition appears to be rising up, which may
end in giving us something as devoutly noble
as the great unaccompanied music of the
Romish Church, without any dry or affected
attempt to drag into the service such barbarous
echoes from the world of Paganism as "the
tones," which, some twenty years ago, were to
be forced, testwise, on all who professed to
talk of chants, or anthems, or hymn tunes.

Almost from the first moment of the
establishment of these "Music Meetings," that of
the town of Birmingham has filled a
conspicuous place, and been distinguished by its
liberality and excellence, and the admirable
discipline with which it has been administered.
As the centre of a district rich in
opulent patrons, within reach of two or three
of the cathedral towns capable of lending it
aid, the capital of Warwickshire, though not
gifted with choristers in any proportion to
Burnley, or Rochdale, or Oldham, managed,
before the close of the last century, to attract
the attention of England as a place where
once in three years the grandest music was
to be heard on the grandest scale. There is
no taking up the memoirs of the Lichfield and
Derby set, which included accomplished men of
art and letters, and that fantastic but not stupid
blue-stocking, Anna Seward, without perceiving
that before the close of the last century the
Birmingham Festival had become an institution
of the county. A steady principle of management
seems to have been early adopted there
and perfected. Thanks to the research and
enthusiasm of one or two of those amateurs, who
have been mentioned as so characteristic of
England, not only were the then new works
by the lights of German music brought forward
in alternation with those of Handel, but the
best men were invited to give a special
importance to the Festival, by writing with an
express view to performance there.

It seems at first sight strangely discouraging
that, our English predilections being so strongly
in favour of the sacred cantata or oratorio, we
English should not as yet have been able to
produce one work of our own which can keep
its place; and this not for want of trial, seeing
that successively Boyce—whose Solomon
contained two vocal pieces long admitted into
sacred concerts, Softly rise, and the duet of
Together let us range the Fields; and Florimel,
Greene, and Arne, and Stanley, and Battishill,
and Dr. Worgan (with his Hannah), and Crotch
(whose weak and eclectic Palestine gives
another proof of how disappointing an artist a
prodigious boy may grow into), tried their best
and proved wanting. It is among the regrets
which belong to the incomplete career of one of
the greatest musicians this country has ever
possessed, that Samuel Wesley did not leave it
an Oratorio. That there is a stuff in his sacred
composition rare in any country was made
excellently clear only the other day, by Mr. Henry
Leslie's disinterment of his eight-voice psalm,
In exitu Israel—one of the finest combinations
of strict and imaginative composition existing
in the library of vocal music.

But, it may be urged, in this most difficult
branch of composition, the German musicians
have not been much more fortunate than our
own. Their land has only four great names,
thus examined. There are the stupendous, but
somewhat impracticable works of Sebastian
Bach—a strange compound of the most colossal
genius, the deepest-rooted science, with formal
tediousness. There are the oratorios of Handel,
never heartily loved by the mass in Germany,
though appreciated by Haydn (who was inspired
to write his Creation by hearing them in
England); by Mozart (whose studies in the form of
additional accompaniments to The Messiah,
Alexander's Feast, and Acis, are so many