whole system of the Roman Communion it- | interest in the dogmatic peculiarities of self, and ask themselves how it is that, some special creed, such an act requires no viewed from the aesthetic and devotional slight effort. To the enormous majority points of view, the Roman ideal of a public religious service exhibits a vitality co-extensive with the Roman Church itself, while the same ideal prevails throughout the Greek Church, and in fact among every denomination of Christians except those whose doctrines were originated by the reformers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Having adopted the hymn-singing of the Nonconformist and foreign Protestant, first introduced into the Church of England by the evangelical party, it is surprising that as yet the Anglican clergy know so little of that Roman theory as to the use of sacred music which is undoubtedly one of the cheif causes which make Catholic services popular among their own poor, while the poor are precisely that very class which Anglicanism has hitherto failed to attract and conciliate. By degrees, if ever the spirit of common sense and of scientific study of the laws of human nature shall sufficiently leaven the Anglican body, it will all at once occur to its clergy and laity that in cvltivating what they call "choral services," with much chanting, and singing of anthems, and intoning of prayers, they are still ignorant of the principles which lie at the root of the whole system of religious worship, when designed for large and half-educated or uneducated congregations of men, women, and childern.

Looking, then, at the subject apart from all Roman, Anglican, or purely Protestant prepossessions, certain facts present themselves for recognition whose reality is undeniable. It is undeniable, in the first place, that the act of praying, and all devotional acts, involve a very considerable effort of the thinking faculties. I am, of course, saying nothing about the truth or falsehood of any theological dogma, or of the peculiar benefits which may or may not be expected to follow from addressing ourselves to the Great Creator of all things. Whatever be a man's belief, it is incontestable that the mental act of prayer requires an application of the thinking powers to which very few persons are equal, for any long period of time. To suppose that men and women who spend their lives in a routine of active life can conduct an intellectual exercise of a very high order for an hour, or an hour and a half, every Sunday morning, and can repeat the process again in the afternoon or evening, is to expect impossibilities. Even to the highly-cultivated intelligence, sustained by a strong personal LIVING AGE. VOL VI. 216.

such a prolonged devotion becomes a formality, an hypocrisy, and a sham. I do not, of course, pretend that it is a conscious hypocrisy, or a deliberate sham, with the hundreds of thousands of sincere people who go through the process once, or twice, or thrice a week in England. What I mean is, that, with the vast majority of the respectable Church of England congregations, the share they practically take in her services is of the nature of a listening to other persons reading or singing, and not, as they persuade themselves, an actual personal sharing in the supplications offered up. They profess to be sharing in " common prayer;" and by fits and starts no doubt they do share in it; but in reality this Anglican theory of " common prayer," by which everybody is intended to embody his thoughts and aspirations in one identical series of words, uttered, either aloud or only mentally, in conjunction with a clergyman who acts as their leader, utterly breaks down, and results in a something else, which is nothing more than a mixture of the feelings produced by the Roman system with those produced by the Nonconformist system. We are in the habit, indeed, of condemning this latter system with unreserved severity, on the ground that it is intellectually impossible to join in the petitions of an extemporary prayer, of which we know nothing beforehand. Consequently, these extemporary prayers are nothing but "oblique sermons," as they were h ppily named by Archbishop Whately. And yet, to the marvel of all devout Anglicans, the Eng lish poor like these Dissenting services, which consist of nothing but professed ser mons, oblique sermons, and hymns; and they profess themselves highly refreshed and edified by these very prayers which to the world in general are no prayers at all In fact, a "gift" at pouring forth a stream of eloquent supplications, redolent of that peculiar and unctuous flavour which to the genuine Anglican and the Roman Catholic alike is intolerable and repellant, is a qualification held in high esteem by English Nonconformists and Scotch Presbyterians. But the cause of the popularity of these. services with the poor is the fact that no excessive demand is thereby made upon their capacities. It is in reality nearly all preaching, which they can listen to with pleasure and interest; and they are only called on to pray in the shape of hymns, into the singing of which they enter with a fervour and a

zeal amazing to those who know only the theoretically the lawfulness of the Roman frigid propriety of congregational singing in nineteen out of every twenty Church of England places of worship. That this extemporary praying was set up by the ultraProtestant reformers for very different reasons is true enough. These reformers, who in their hatred to Popery and Prelacy forbade all praying from a book, unknowingly hit upon a practice which, in substituting oblique sermons for prayers, fell in with the intellectual incapacities of the ignorant and the poor,

occasions, indeed, the Roman system has | Catholic or Protestant, whether masses, mobeen introduced in its amplest completion'; tetts, or oratorios, would never have been as, for instance, when Handel wrote his fa- called into existence had their authors been mons Te Deum for performance at the limited to an organ accompaniment. The public thanksgiving for the victory of Det-greatest organist composers that the word fingen. Still, while each distinctive form has ever known, such as Handel, Sebastian of religious music exists in use both in the Bach, and Mendelssohn, invariably wrote Roman and the Anglican Churches, the their sacred vocal music to an orchestral fact remains that through the prevalence of accompaniment; and when Handel was different ideas as to the office of music in called in to write a Te Deum for a great religion, we find in each one of the three national rejoicing, like Purcell before him, great sections of European and non-Russian he broke through all the traditional meshes Christendom a special development of one of the cathedral system, and wrote for a of the three forms of musical expression. full orchestra. Even far less men than Protestantism proper relies upon the metri- Handel and Purcell have shown how much cal hymn, Anglicanism is distinguished by was in them when they could escape from the chant in its various modifications, and the trainmels of the organ, and revel in Roman Catholicism by its elaborate orches- the delicacies and capabilities of strings and tral and vocal masses and motetts. wood and brass. Boyce was one of these. His various anthems and services are generally worthy of attention; but in his anthem, "Lord, thou hast been our refuge," which is for a full orchestra and divided into a series of well worked-out movements, he appears almost a man of genius.

Viewed as compositions and works of art, the productions of the Roman and the Anglican schools are strikingly dissimilar. While the chant in an English cathedral, well performed by a sufficient choir, is singularly beautiful and expressive, and far more perfect than any thing of the same kind Then, again, it is altogether impossible to to be heard abroad, except in rare instances, write effective songs or choruses when the the anthems and the services, as the more whole composition is to take in the performlengthy settings of the Te Deum and Canticles ance only a few minutes. It is as impossiare termed, are for the most part dull and ble as it would be to make a five-ac tragedy dreary compositions. It is the fashion with last only half an hour, or to compress the some English critics to praise the cathedral Iliad into a single book. Musical beauty is school of music as if it were really a great dependent upon the melodic and contrapunand noble school; and undoubtedly it counts tal development of melodious phrases, which among its composers several respectable in themselves will have no charactert at all names, and a few great names even. But unless extended to a certain length. But as a whole, it is respectable and dull, and the rules of the typical cathedral anthem nothing more. Whatever natural gifts may permit nothing of this. A composition may have been possessed by our writers of an- contain three or four separate movements, thems and services, they have been neutral- but it must be all over in about the time thas ised by two causes the necessity of writ- would take to perform a single air or chorus ing vocal music to be sung with an organ in an oratorio. Consequently, with few exaccompaniment, and the short period al- ceptions, the cathedral anthem is a collection lowed by the traditions of Anglican worship of short pieces, made up of mere musical for the performance of a work in many phrases, rarely original, and almost always divisions. The organ, glorious and unap-cold and fragmentary. And the demand proachable as it is in its own way, and for something more æsthetically complete admirable as an accompaniment to a large and less chilling to the feelings has of late mass of voices singing a simple melody simply harmonised, is too solid and massive in its tones to accompany the human voice in delicate solos, duets, or concerted pieces. In the hands of a player of distinguished skill and unusual sensibility it is a barely tolerable substitute for the string and the wind instruments of an orchestra in the accompaniment of rich, florid, or highly-wrought vocal music. But I believe that every skilled professional composer would agree with me in holding that the great works of the great masters of sacred music, whether

years become so decided, that it is now common to hear anthems which are simply adaptions of foreign compositions to English words. Thirty or forty years ago, and still earlier, the innovations were beginning, and Pergolesi, Haydn, and Mozart were laid under contribution to enliven the stately cathedrals and college chapels, where nothing more exciting than the solid gravities of Croft or the inanities of Kent had been heard for three centuries before. Altogether, it is clear that the Roman idea as to the pratically religious effect of the mere listening to

To us,

sacred music is steadily on the increase defy the Divine power. The Greeks, or some among English churchmen who are guiltless of them, believed that. when Pandora, by of even the faintest Romanising tendencies, opening her box, sent forth a host of curses although the real ground on which the prac- to make man's life a misery, Hope was given tice is to be advocated is little understood. to bear him up against his sorrows. At present, too, the whole matter is compli- in the midst of our confusion of tongues, cated by the advance of the Ritualist school and of the swarm of troubles and perplexiand all its dogmatic extravagances. Never- ties in which we are tossing to and fro, Mutheless, there is not the smallest connection sic remains as the one universal language, between the use of music as the vocal ex- intelligible to all, and the one relief which pression of devout feeling, or as a stimulant may be applied to every sort of suffering. to a healthy 'religions mental activity, and Every attempt, therefore, which is made to any special dogmatic system whatever. bring the vast, struggling, weary multitude Among the first of the Protestant Noncon- within its influences, is to me not merely a formist bodies to cultivate religious music in matter of interesting intelligence, but a public services was the Unitarian commu- fresh help to the conviction that after all nity; and at the present moment it is diffi humanity is on its way to better things. It cult to name a church or sect where the new is interesting, whatever form it takes, ideas are not making way. And just in pro- whether that of a decently conducted music portion as the fierceness of Ritualist and hall, or a ballad concert, or in connection anti-Ritualist, and of Catholic and Protest- with a penny reading, or as a performance ant polemics dies away, it will be perceived of Sunday bands in the parks, or as those that it is of the very essence of music, whether "Sunday Evenings for the People," in which in the form of a brilliant orchestral mass, a few men of high position in the scientific or of a grave and noble chant, or of a hearty world recently attempted to combat the popular hymn, absolutely to be non-dogmat- jealousies and follies of Sabbatarianism. ie; expressing, not the creeds of Trent, or But if the view which I have here most imLambeth, or Geneva, but the devout senti- perfectly advocated is true, all these would ments of every man who adores, loves, and be trifling in importance compared with any "feels after" Him, "the True God"-if I serious attempt at employing the powers of may again quote the words of Fichte, lately music for the distinct purpose of religiously quoted by Professor Tyndall in these pages influencing the poor, the ignorant, and the "in whom we all are, and live, and may criminal, apart from the proselytising aims be blessed, and out of whom there is only of any one religious denomination. As death and nothingness." matters now stand, no one religious body succeeds in making a wide and permanent impression either upon the skilled or the unskilled manual labour of England. Each one, by its narrowness and its inflexibility in adhering to the traditions of the past or to some arbitrary code of rules and rubrics, neutralises the influence it might exert on the seething mass of ignorance and brutality. Each has its own musical system; but that system is neither planned nor carried out with special reference to those regenerating powers which are latent in music itself. Its music is the adjunct or servant to some definite doctrinal creed, and is not designed simply to be the preacher of practical religion to the untaught listener, or to be no more than the voice of the humble piety of the poor man and his family. The wealthy and the middle classes have their oratorios, their choral services, and their masses, which serve to soothe and elevate them, and satisfy their utmost longings. But the hard-working and the outcast are forgotten, and all they know of the divine influence of musical sound is "the lengthened sweetness long drawn out" of grind

Apart, therefore, from all questions as to the abstract truth or error of any dogmatic creed, it is to me a source of unfailing interest to watch the gradual and steady advance in this popular cultivation of music, as a most powerful instrument for civilising, bumanising, and spirtualising an age which certainly is in sore need of every such elevating influence. Amidst the breaking up of old beliefs, the conflicts of contending superstitions, and the groping, trembling, and almost shuddering efforts of many of the leaders of popular thought, after some sure basis for present self-devotion, and some ground for future hope-amidst all this, it is a pleasure, and more than a pleasure, to see that we are firmly holding to something which is not a delusion or a sham. Whatever else may be false or transitory, it is certain that the sources of the power of musical expression, and of its astonishing practical influence on human action, lie deep down in the recesses of our nature. The writer of the book of Genesis describes what, he held to be a supernatural confusion of tongues as a punishment for the building of a tower to