Enough to say that they engaged the attention
of our best artists, poetical and musical.
Addison, Congreve, Pope (the last unfortunate in
his colleague, William Walond), did their best
in contribution to the ceremonials held in honour
of Music's Saint, and Purcell, Blow, Eccles, and
Wesley set them; but our musicians have
borne no proportion in variety and vigour to
our poets, and Handel's two compositions are
the only ones that survive or are even
recollected. An attempt, "with a difference," to revive
the interest in the Saint, was the other day
made by Mr. Benedict, in his " Legend,"
produced at the Norwich Festival.–The last
scene of this is, musically, an inspiration.

These Cecilian odes were not Handel's only
tribute to " Music's power." The ample library
of his compositions contains nothing finer than
what may be called the concert scene in
"Solomon," where the divers moods of the art were
set by the wisest of kings before his guest, the
subtlest and most superb of queens.–Another
instance of a versatility, for which he has never
been sufficiently credited, can be proved in
Handel's music about the music of birds.
There has always been more or less a fancy,
since executive facility developed itself, to
write bravura airs on this theme. Hundreds
could be found in the earlier Italian operas; but
none live save three. Handel threw off
many, each different from the others, but only
two survive–" Hush, ye pretty warbling choir,"
from " Acis and Galatea," with its deliciously
fantastic accompaniment, and " Sweet bird,"
from "St. Pensieroso," in which the dialogue of
voice and instrument might have been inspired
by Crashaw's fantasy of " the lutanist and the
nightingale," with a prescience that one day
Madame Lind Goldschmidt would sing it–The
spirit and charm of these can hardly be better
appreciated than by comparing them with the
third bird-song which lives, that in Haydn's
"Creation," which, though younger in date,
and more ambitious in its attempt at variety,
and, like all that Haydn wrote, exquisitely
finished, is comparatively faded and
conventional.

Let us pass at once to another composition
of music about Music, which long enjoyed a
certain popularity, especially in Germany,
Andreas Romberg' s "Lay of the Bell." Here,
like Handel before him, the composer had the
rare advantage of colloborating with a real poet.
Not even " Alexander's Feast " is richer in
pictures than Schiller's splendid lyric. But it
fell into the hands of a second-rate, howbeit
correct, writer. Andreas Romberg was trained
in a good time. Science and taste were not in
his country scouted as obsolete, when he wrote,
neither was Beauty avoided as insipid, inexpressive,
and cloying in its feebleness. His was a time,
too, when discovery had by no means exhausted
all rational combinations; when there were more
fancy-lands for Fancy to conquer than now
exist–so many have been ravaged by newer
imaginative composers.–Romberg, however,
wrought without a spark of genius; at best his
music can but be rated as a weak reflexion of
that of Haydn and Mozart; nowhere inelegant,
nowhere ill-made, showing, throughout, a due
sense of the situations to be treated, but
mediocre. Time has not so much wrinkled it, as
made it effete, by discharging its colour, and
disclosing its inherent want of individuality and
vigour. It must perish, together with a mass
of respectable writing, which it cost honest
men years of labour to produce; which publics,
less satiated than ours, have applauded. Why
should not some one, following the fashion of
Handel, set this ode again?–It would have
been a goodly task for Mendelssohn, who was
notoriously not averse to the idea of celebrating
sound in Music. Among his papers, after his
decease, was found a copy of Wordsworth's
noble ode, " The Power of Sound," which was
under his consideration as a theme for a Cantata,
at the moment when Death's premature arrest
suspended his labours.

                  FLINT JACK.

IT may be questioned whether Hudibras was
quite correct in stating,

             And sure the pleasure is as great
             In being cheated as to cheat.

Undoubtedly being well cheated is a pleasant
sensation, so long as it lasts; but Providence has
gifted us with only a limited allowance of
gullibility. When that is exhausted, cheats, adieu!
Yet they are never afraid to begin again after
a check that would make honest men timid and
shamefaced to all futurity. Cheating is long,
though life is short. We therefore conclude
that

          The pleasure, sure, is not so great
          Of being cheated as to cheat.

Such, probably, is the opinion of a hero who's
exploits have been recently made known to
fame. How he has chuckled at having taken
in the very elect of antiquaries!–at finding
that a Roman urn (calcined bones, earth, and
all) which a canny sceptic had refused to accept
for five shillings was afterwards bought up for
three pounds–at having included on his list
of dupes the curator of the British Museum!

Some doubt has been expressed as to the
native place of this real personage:–for the
reader will please to understand that Flint Jack
is no imaginary creation, but a simple and
substantial fact. Edward Simpson, alias John
Wilson, alias Snake Billy, alias Flint Jack, the
Prince of Counterfeiters, is spoken of and written
about, throughout all England, as an indigenous
phenomenon given to the world by Sleights,
Whitby, in cunning Yorkshire. But is there
any evidence, besides his own, that he is a
native of that parish or its neighbourhood?
His accent is not Yorkshire; and, twenty years
ago, he was called Cockney Bill. A like
cloud hangs over some of his places of
residence. He once appeared before the
Scarborough magistrates, but escaped imprisonment