has been constructed, on the most approved acoustic principles, capable of accommodating upwards of one hundred performers; and in order to obviate the only defect of this Concert Room, viz., the repercussion of sound inseparable from all circular buildings, ornamental draperies have been so arranged as entirely to remove this objection; and while preventing all reverberation, will add materially to the splendor of the general coup-d'œil. Notwithstanding the immense expense attendant on bringing so large a corps of eminent artists from Europe, and the extensive character of the arrangements d'ensemble, M. JULLIEN, whose efforts have always been devoted to the popularization of music, has determined to arrange the prices on a scale commensurate with the objects in view. They will be GRISI AND MARIO. THE following is an outline of the farewell tour of Grisi and Mario, in the Provinces of Great Britain-undertaken by the indefatigable Mr. Beale : Sept. 26, Monday, Devonport; 27, Tuesday, Bristol; 28, Wednesday, Bath; 29, Thursday, Exeter; 30, Friday, Plymouth; Oct. 1, Saturday, Torquay; 3, Monday, Shrewsbury; 4, Tuesday, Liverpool; 5, Wednesday, Worcester; 6, Thursday, Birmingham; 7, Friday, Sheffield; 8, Saturday, Hanley; 10, Monday, Manchester; 11, Tuesday, Liverpool; 12, Wednesday, Newcastle; 13, Thursday, Edinburgh; 14, Friday, Glasgow; 15, Saturday, Edinburgh; 17, Monday, Hull; 18, Tuesday, Leeds; 19, Wednesday, Preston; 20, Thursday, Bradford; 21, Friday, Cheltenham; 22, Saturday, Leaming The Concerts will commence each evening at 8 o'clock, and ter-ton; 24, Monday, Cambridge; 25, Tuesday, Southampton; minate at 10 precisely. Tickets to be had at all the principal Music Stores. THE YORK MUSICAL FESTIVALS. 26, Wednesday, Salisbury; 27, Thursday, Winchester. HOW TO BEGIN A LEADER. THE First Grand Musical Festival commenced on the 23rd of September, 1823. The whole of the three aisles of the nave were fitted up in a most splendid manner. The orchesA SPOON often approaches a lady's lips, without kissing tra was erected under the great tower. The number of per- them. A muff often enfolds a lady's hands, without squeezsons who attended the four days' performances was 17,000. ing them. But a girdle never encircles a lady's waist, without The band consisted of 285 vocal and 180 instrumental per-pressing it. And a shoe never covers a lady's foot, without formers, total 465. The gross receipts were £16,174; the pinching it. Therefore, it is better to be a girdle, or a shoe, than a spoon or a muff. gross surplus, £7,200. The Second Festival commenced on the 13th of September, 1825; total number of persons present at the four performances, 20,873. The band consisted of 615 persons, vocal and instrumental. The gross receipts amounted to £20,876 10s. The Third Festival took place on the 23rd of September, 1828, and three following days. The band was composed of 618 performers. The receipts were £16,769 11s. 4d. The aggregate attendance, 14,525 persons. (To be finished in "The Field.") THE MUSICIAN'S HOUSEHOLD MEDICINES. WINE AGAINST ADVERSE MELANCHOLY, PRESERVING THE Take the Roots of Bugloss, well scraped, and cleansed from in Wine of Gold extinguished ut suprà, and add of Nitre their inner Pith, and cut them into small slices; steep them three grains, and drink it ut suprà, mixed with fresh Wine. The Roots must not continue steeped above a quarter of an hour, and they must be changed thrice. The Fourth Festival (which was the last) was held on the 7th of September, 1835, and three succeeding days. This festival was patronised, in person, by Her Majesty (then the Princess Victoria) and the Duchess of Kent. The royal party attended the Minster on each of the four days. The band consisted of about 600 persons. The gross receipts were £16,662 3s. 9d.; the gross expenditure, £13,073 15s. The surplus of £3,588 8s. 9d. was divided in the propor- BREAKFAST-PRESERVATIVE AGAINST THE GOUT AND RHEUMES. tions of £1,794 4s. 5d. to the Restoration Fund for the fire of 1829, and £448 11s. 1d. each to the Infirmaries of York, Leeds, Hull, and Sheffield. [Here follows a list of the archbishops, from A.D. 625, which we suppress, with as little compunction as the archbishops suppressed the festivals. What a festival it would be if the archbishops were suppressed-we mean in a "har monious" or musical sense! D. R.] (Next morning you will find yourself jolly-drunk. ED.) No. 7. To take once in the Month at least, and for two Days together, one grain of Cactorei, in my ordinary Broath. (Next morning you will find you have taken the wrong broath. ED.) Communicated by ALBERTUS PARVICULUS. 1853. another concert at Brighton, for Monday afternoon, at which this MISS ARABELLA GODDARD.-Mr. Wright has announced young and accomplished pianist will perform. us in. MUSIC. (Continued from our last.) With all this array of natural advantages-science to endow her-instinct to regulate-memory to help her-what is it after all that Music can do? Is the result proportionate to her means? Does she enlighten our views, or enlarge our understandings? Can she make us more intelligent or more prudent, or more practical or more moral? No, but she can make us more romantic; and that is what we want now-a-days more than anything else. She can give us pleasures we cannot account for, and raise feelings we cannot reason upon: she can transport us into a sphere where selfishness and worldliness have no part to play; her whole domain, in short, lies in that much-abused land of romance-the only objection to which in real life is that mankind are too weak and too wicked to be trusted in it. This she offers unreservedly to our range with her attendant spirits, the feelings and the fancy, in every form of spiritual and earthly emotion, of fair or fantastic vision, stationed at the portals to beckon and welcome But if she cannot captivate us by these means, she tries no other. She appeals neither to our reason, our principles, nor our honour. She can as little point a moral as she can paint a picture. She can neither be witty, satirical, nor personal. There is no Hogarth in Music. Punch can give her no place on his staff. She cannot reason, and she cannot preach; but, also, she cannot wound, and she cannot defile. She is the most innocent companion of the Loves and Graces; for real romance is always innocent. Music is not pure to the pure only, she is pure to all. We can only make her a means of harm when we add speech to sound. It is only by a marriage with words that she can become a minister of evil. An instrument which is music, and music alone, enjoys the glorious disability of expressing a single vicious idea, or of inspiring a single corrupt thought. It is an anomaly in human history how any form of religion can condemn an organ; for it could not say an impious thing if it would. "Every police director," as Hoffmann says in his Phantasie Stücke, "may safely give his testimony to the utter inocuousness of a newly-invented musical instrument, in all matters touching religion, the state, and public morals; and every music-master may unhesitatingly pledge his word to the parents of his pupils that his new sonata does not contain one reprehensible idea"-unless he have smuggled it into the dedication. Music never makes men think, and that way lies the mischief: she is the purest Sanscrit of the feelings. The very Fall seems to have spared her department. she had taken possession of the heart before it became desperately wicked, and had ever since kept her portion of it free from the curse, making it her glorious avocation upon earth to teach us nothing but the ever higher and higher enjoyment of an innocent pleasure. No means therefore can be disproportionate to such an end. It is as if How fortunate that an art thus essentially incorrupt should reign over a greater number of hearts than any other! If poetry and painting have their thousands, music has her tens of thousands. Indeed, we should hardly deem that man a responsible being whose heart had not some weak point by which the voice of the charmer could enter; for it enters his better part. Not that it is possible to form any theory of the class of minds most susceptible of her influence-facts stop and contradict us at every step. The question lies too close at the sanctuary of our being not to be overshadowed by its mystery. There are no given signs by which we can predicate that one man has music in his soul, and another has not. Voltaire is commonly stated to have been a hater and despiser of the art of sweet sounds; but there is perhaps as much evidence against the assertion, as for it, in his works. Grétry says of him that he would sit with a discontented face whilst music was going on-which, considering what French music was in his time, might argue not a worse ear than his neighbours, but a better. But granting Voltaire had no musical sympathies in him, and it goes against our conscience to think he had,-his friend and fellow-thinker, Frederick of Prussia, had them in a great degree; and a man as unlike both as this world could offer, the late Dr. Chalmers, had all Scotchmen, by some merciful provision of nature, appear none at all-except, of course, that he liked a Scotch air, as to do. Then it may seem natural to our preconceived ideas that such a mind as Horace Walpole's should have no capacity for musical pleasure; but by what possible analogy was it that Charles Lamb's should have just as little? How came it to pass that Rousseau, the worthless ancestor of all Radicals, was an enthusiastic and profound musician—while Dr. Johnson, the type of old Toryism, did not know one tune from another; of Heaven, and encouraged the study of it by precept and or that Luther pronounced music to be one of the best gifts the evil one, and conscientiously condemned it to perpetual example, while Calvin and Knox persecuted it as a snare of degradation in their churches? All we can say is, that the attributes to link those natures together whom nothing else majority pay her homage-that it is one of her heavenly can unite. Men of the most opposite characters and lives that history can produce fraternize in music. If Alfred loved her, so did Nero; if Coeur de Lion was a sweet musician, so was Charles IX.; if George III. delighted in all music, especially in that of a sacred character, so did Henry VIII.; if the hero of our own times, the motto of whose life has been duty, is musical both by nature and inheritance, his antagonist, bade a musician ask of him what favour he pleased. John Oliver Cromwell Napoleon, at least hummed opera tunes. Wesley remonstrated against leaving all the good tunes to the devil. Every private family could quote some domestic in the love for music. There is no forming any system of torment and some domestic treasure, alike in nothing else but judgment. There is no looking round in a concert-room and saying in one's heart, these people are all of one way of thinking-they are all intelligent, or all humane, or all poetical There is no broad mark young and old-high and lowpassionate and meek-wise and foolish-babies, idiots, insane At most there are some people-all, more or less, like music. who are indifferent, or fancy themselves so, as much from want of opportunity as of taste-some who don't care for bad music, and never hear good-if so hard a lot can be imagined but there is only one class of men who condemn it, and those are fanatics; and there is only one order of beings, according to Luther, who hate it, and those are devils. But, "If Music and sweet Poetry agree, As needs they must, the sister and the brother," it is among the poets that we shall find the most invariable appreciation of the art of numbers. And what a row of undying names rise at the mere suggestion-all bound up with melodious associations, who have done due homage to the power of sound, and been in just return linked for ever with her most exquisite productions-thus sending their immortal ideas in double channels to the heart! Shakspeare, whose world-hackneyed mottos come over our minds with freshened power and truth, as we seek to analyse what he at once de fined-nowhere with such instinctive truth as in the words he has put into Caliban's mouth "The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not;Milton-music-descended-who, when the chord of sweet sound is struck, dwells upon it with such melting luxuriance of enjoyment, exalts it with such solemn grandeur of feeling, and clothes it with such sounding harmony of verse as makes us feel as if an earlier Handel might have been given to the world, if a previous Milton had not been needful to inspire him ;-old Cowley, too, who asks the same question all have asked "Tell me, oh Muse! for thou, or none canst tell The mystic powers that in bless'd numbers dwell,”— though he goes on, in the fantastic metaphor of the day, to relate how Chaos first "To numbers and fix'd rules was brought ever is really music-others again, conspicuous as musical wickedness in high places, who care for none but their own. Doubtless some acquaintance with the principles of the art, and practical skill of hand, greatly enhance the pleasure of the listener; but still it is a sorrowful fact that the class of individuals who contentedly perform that species of selfserenade which goes by the ominous title of " playing a little" are the last in whom any real love for it is to be found. There is something in the small retailing of the arts, be it music, painting, or poetry, which utterly annihilates all sense of their real beauty. There is a certain pitch of strumming and scraping which must be got over, or they had better never have touched a note. (To be continued.) Dramatic. GERMAN OPERA, DRURY LANE.-The series of operatic performances by a German Company, the chief vocalists of which were Mmes. Caradori, Zimmerman, Mdlle. Weinthal, and Herren Reichardt and Formes, was brought to a close on Saturday evening last, with the performance of the first act of Norma--the third act of Lucrezia Borgia-a miscellaneous Earth made the bass, the treble flame arose ;"and Dryden, who overflows with love for the heart, and has left in Alexander's Feast a manual of musical mesmerism never to be surpassed. Who will also not think of Collins-concert-and a ballet. But for the continued illness of Mme. and his death, listening to the distant choir at Chichester? Coradori, the management under Mr. Jarrett would probably Yet from many poets music receives only that conventional have been successful; indeed, as it was, no inconsiderable homage which one art pays to another. We need hardly amount of money was taken at the doors; and if the theatre recall Pope's poetry-nor Swift's-nor Goethe's-to know had been free to have permitted a greater number of prethat she had no zealous worshippers in them-all men of sentations, there is little doubt the Director would have better heads than hearts, who understood the feelings more reaped the reward due to his enterprise, as the company was by a process of anatomy than by sympathy. Others again just getting into good working order, and the band under feel the contingent poetry attending particular music too Herr Anschuez began to respond to the conductor's baton much to be real enthusiasts for the music itself. Byron with precision. Of Mme. Caradori, it is but just to say that loved the music that came to him "o'er the waters." she is a very good singer and intelligent actress. She does Burns was too much possessed with the "tuning of the heart" not lack fire and energy, which, added to a good voice and to have any cold judgment about that of the voice. Scott facility of execution, hold out promise of a high reputation loved the hum of the bagpipe, and would have liked the as an artiste. Her Norma and Lucrezia Borgia were both beating of the tom-tom had it been Scotch-though the verse well conceived and vocalized, and nothwithstanding severe of each has been as much a fund of inspiration to the musician indisposition, Mme. Caradori achieved a triumph in each as if, like Moore, they themselves could have sung as well as character. Mme. Zimmerman's performance in Der Freischutz, they have written. We should question Mr. Wordsworth's and in the opera of Norma, also deserve commendation ; musical sympathies-direct or indirect. The materials of his she sang artistically and well; and Mdlle. Weinthal's Orsini poetry are not akin to music. We do not long to set his deep-but for her unnecessary nervousness-unnecessary, because thoughts to melody- they leave nothing unexpressed for the she possesses a good contralto voice, proved that the lady did musician to say. No poet who has been so much read has not lack the means, but the nerve, of singing and acting well. been so little sung. Nor does music in her turn seem to in- The "Brindisi" was spiritedly given. Of Herr Formes, as spire him with poetry: he tells us, for example, of the Ranz the Duke Alphonso, little need be said; his meed of praise de Vacheshas constantly been awarded to him for his histrionic and vocal excellence. Herr Reichardt, as Pollio, sang well and acted better; the only fault was that his voice is not sufficiently powerful for so large a theatre. He is graceful on the stage, and is a decided acquisition to the operatic boards. Considering the difficulties Herr Anschuez had to contend with, the band went well, and it is to be regretted that the company could not continue at the theatre to mature their wellcommenced plans. We understand that Madame Caradori, Mdlle. Weinthal, and MM. Formes and Reichardt, are about to proceed to Scotland, to give similar-and we trust profitable-representations. "I listen, but no faculty of mine Avails those modulations to detect, Which, heard in foreign lands, the Swiss affect A musician might have said this-a mere musician-out, we SURREY.-Balfe's opera, The Enchantress, was revived on Thursday. Although by no means one of the composer's best works, it contains a good many of his fluent and graceful melodies. The part of the heroine, by Miss Romer, is an arduous one; she is not only the central point of the action, but she appears in almost every scene, and in a different costume at almost every entrée, thus making the business of the toilet alone no joke; but Miss Romer is singularly happy in her changes-no one changes better. Among the encores awarded to her were the popular song, "A Youthful Knight," the cavatina with chorus in the third act, and the final trio with Messrs. Borrani and Travers; the latter gentleman was encored in a song. The opera wanted more rehearsing; the chorus was often at fault, and the prompter was in frequent request. STRAND. This little theatre closed on Saturday last, for the season, which, as it has been an experimental one, has been of somewhat more than ordinary interest. Full audiences, at least at small theatres, are but fallacious tests of success. Mr. Allcroft has adhered to his bond; the music has been, with few exceptions, English, the company a working one, and, if enterprise and activity could insure success, there could be no doubt of the result. The chief novelty has been the burlesque on Sardanapalus-(the best that has been produced)—which has had a merry and successful run. Mr. Allcroft has also been fortunate in the choice of his fair coadjutor, Miss Rebecca Isaacs, whose exertions in her triple capacity of vocalist, actress and directress, have, we understand been indefatigable, and have certainly been one of the mainsprings of Mr. Allcroft's success, whatever it may have been; and so, with many wishes for the future prosperity of his undertaking, we bid him adieu for the present. THE GRAND GLASGOW ORGAN. (From the Morning Herald.) DURING the last few days this magnificent instrument has passed the ordeal of several performances at the manufactory of its builders, Messrs. Gray and Davison, in the New-road, Mr. Henry Smart and Mr. W. Rea having each tested its capabilities to the utmost possible extent. It will shortly be erected in the City Hall of Glasgow, where, we hear, it will be inaugurated with due solemnity. The general excellence of its design, the complete novelty of many of its registers, and the happy and original mechanical contrivances used to multiply and heighten the effect of its various combinations, render it an object of unusual attraction among those who take an interest in the progress and improvement of organ-building. Although undoubtedly a large instrument, the Glasgow organ is not one of the largest of its class. The peculiarities of its intended site, and a still more stringent cause- -want of adequate funds-forbade the further growth of its dimensions. It contains, we see, but fifty-five stops, while many of the largest instruments of the Continent have ninety, and even one hundred. Not first-class magnitude, however, but unexceptionable completeness and excellence in kind, have been the objects in its construction; and these, so far as we have had the means of judging, appear to be entirely realized. It is specially intended as a "concert organ,' and for this purpose, while no sacrifice of the ordinary organ characteristics was demanded, many and great novelties of tone and mechanism were indispensable. The compass of its three key-boards considerably exceeds the usual limit. Commencing at C C in the bass, its claviers extend through five complete octaves to C in the treble; and thus by means of an apparently slight departure from the ordinary practice, giving the facility of executing any species of orchestral music without distorting or mutilating its passages. In the selection of tones to be developed on these key-boards we find still wider departures from ordinary custom. Instead of those duplicated collections of diapasons, principals, and fifteenths, which, until latterly, appeared to be our inalienable inheritance from the times of Harris and Father Smith, we have here a successful attempt to embody a law of acoustics, long known, though but slightly regarded, viz., that the greater the variety of character in combined tones, the richer and more powerful will be the result of their combination. Among the varied qualities of tone on the great organ clavier we have an exquisite specimen of the German gamba, and two kinds of the flûte harmonique, one of eight feet and the other of four feet pitch. These latter stops are the invention of M. Cavaillé, the eminent French organ-builder, and seem to us destined to work great changes in the whole character of organ-tone. Their structure is as original in idea as their effect is delicious. Not only do they possess greater breadth and purity, individually, than any other register of the flute genus, but the volume and richness they impart, in combination, to the rest of the great organ, are, we think, extraordinary. An immense improvement in the character of the reed-stops of this clavier, also, has been gained by the use of an increasing pressure of the air with which they are supplied in ascending from the lower to their upper range. This obedience to another acoustic law, well known but hitherto unobserved in this country, has undoubtedly contributed towards making these stops some of the finest of their class in existence. The swell clavier operates on an organ of very unusual largeness and excellence. In it we equally remark the freshness, variety, and purity we scarcely, if ever, remember to have heard equalled. The Voie of the flute-work, and an equality and volume in the reeds which humaine, in this section of the instrument, is another French im portation of very curious character. When employed, in conjunction with the tremulant, in delivering a melody, its tones are mournful and impassioned in the highest degree; and when used in plain chords, responsively to bursts of the full organ, it is impossible not to be struck with that same singular mimicry of the chanting of a distant choir of voices which has been made familiar to every visiter to the great organ at Freyburg. The choir and pedal organs have more resemblance to the usualities of their class, though in the first we observe a new. stop, the Voix celeste, the charming effect of which, strange to say, depends on its being to a certain extent out of tune, and the Corno di Bassetto, a delicious imitation of its orchestral namesake; and, in the second, we have again a magnificent reed-stop, the Bombarde, which, forcible and grand as it is, is so nicely balanced as not to bear down any of the combinations with which it may be employed. Among the mechanical peculiarities of the Glasgow organ we may mention the introduction of the apparatus called "Barker's Pneumatic Lever," an invention of great merit, which has the effect of imparting extreme and unvarying lightness to the touch, whether only one clavier be used, or all three in conjunction. The great success of its application in this instance ought, unquestionably, to recommend it in the case of all larger instruments. There are, besides, a number of highly ingenious, but not easily explainable, mechanical arrangements, by means of which the different claviers may be brought into communication in a great variety of ways, and the contrivance of which is as original as the effects produced are novel and beautiful. This instrument, as we have intimated, has been tested at the recent public performances by the execution of almost every conceivable style of music; and while its breadth and vigour of tone do ample justice to the severest schools of organ music, we recognise, we apprehend, the special purpose of the builders, in the ease, grace, and almost magical effect with which it is capable of rendering overtures, operatic airs, and everything in which the fancies of orchestral colouring find place. In the variety it places at the disposal of a single performer, it may claim superiority, so far as our experience goes, over every instrument yet constructed in England. At the close of their published description of the organ, the builders specially mention their obligation to Mr. Henry Smart "for much valuable assistance during the progress of the instrument. This is an acknowledgment gracefully made, and we have no doubt, thoroughly deserved. Mr. Smart, one of our most distinguished native musicians, has, for years, made the structure of the organ a "loving study," and, in addition to a fund of inventive mechanical talent, possesses a vast and peculiar amount of information on the subject, derived both from foreign and domestic sources. He has, we understand, designed the Glasgow organ, and superintended its construction throughout, e en to the extent of furnishing drawings for its more novel and complicated mechanical features. THE BRADFORD MUSICAL FESTIVAL. (From our own Reporter.) BRADFORD, SEPT. 1. The good impression produced by yesterday's performances is unanimous. The inhabitants of Bradford are elated with their success; and with reason. A more auspicious beginning could not possibly have been made; and, that the germ of another great triennial festival has been formed, is now the general conviction. angels" Happy and blest are they who have endured," and "How lovely are the messengers that preach us the gospel of peace," which, though both were taken a little too slowly, were sung with a delicacy and truth of intonation that left nothing to be desired, and filled with hope and faith the mind of the hearer, while it delighted him with the irresistible spell of flowing and natural melody. The little chorus in A, "O be gracious, ye immortals," when the Gentiles, edified by the miracles of Paul and Barnabas, address them with petitions, as to gods, and entitle them " Jupiter" and "Mercurius "deserves mention for the same excellence, and for the extreme neatness with which the by no means easy flute obligato passages were played by Mr. Pratten. This chorus is curious, as presenting one of the rare instances of plagiarism which may be laid to the charge of Mendelssohn. No one familiar with both works can fail to detect the singularly close resemblance it bears to the opening subject in the slow movement of Beethoven's pianoforte concerto in G. But, if Mendelssohn, with all his invention, was now and then a thief, so was Beethoven (instance the strong likeness to "Batti, batti," in the slow movement of his pianoforte quintet in E flat); so was Handel (the most uncompromising of any, by the way), and so, indeed, have been the best and greatest of them. The choice of Mendelssohn's St. Paul, which, while it equals in beauty, surpasses in difficulty almost any of the great oratorios, was justified by the result. The most sanguine, however were agreeably surprised at the execution. The choruses, especially, so varied and elaborate, were almost without exception admirably sung; and it is but just to say that much of this was owing to Mr. Jackson, of Bradford, who, previous to Mr. Costa's arrival, superintended the trials. The component parts of this fine body of singers have been chiefly gathered from the Yorkshire towns. Manchester sent in its tribute; but the rest came chiefly from the madrigal, motet, and choral societies of Leeds, and from various societies at Halifax, Huddersfield, and other neighbouring towns; while a strong body of Bradfordians completed the force-which, in the best requisites of choral singing, has rarely been equalled, It is unnecessary to say much more of St. Paul. The names still more rarely excelled. In the solemn chorales, that con- of the principal singers have already been enumerated, and it stitute so striking a feature in the oratorio of St. Paul, a rich is enough to add that those solo passages which made the ness of tone, a command over the crescendo, and of the grada- most sensible impression, and were, moreover, the best sung, tions between loud and soft, were remarked, which at times were the beautiful soprano air, "Jerusalem! thou that killest suggested a comparison with the famous singers of the Cologne the Prophets" (by Madame Clara Novello), which, but for Choral Union; while, on the other hand, the impetuous cho- one or two "graces," that robbed it of its simple purity, would ruses of the infuriated mob, commencing with the arraign-have been perfect; the well-known ariosa, "But the Lord is ment of Stephen ("Now this man ceaseth not to utter blas- mindful of his own" (by Mrs. Lockey), a performance that phemous words"), and ending with the terrible" Stone him to left nothing to criticise; the aria which describes the repentdeath," where the singers have to contend against the whole ance of Saul, after the miraculous conversion (by Herr power of the orchestra, were equally well done. But the Formes), in which the profound dejection of the words and grandest performance of all was the scene of the conversion of the deep pathos of the music were powerfully conveyed by Saul, containing the sublime chorus "Rise up, arise, shine!" the singer; and the cavatina of Barnabas, "Be thou faithful and the chorale, 66 Sleepers, wake," which forms the principal unto death" (by Mr. Sims Reeves), the reading and execution subject of the overture. The genius of Mendelssohn was of which were beyond reproach. The violoncello accompaninever more gloriously demonstrated than in this most thrilling ment in this air was remarkably well played-we believe by passage. The expression of the awful admonition of the pro- Mr. Lucas. Had there been nothing else to signalize the virphet (Isaiah), "Behold, now total darkness covereth the king-gin festival of Bradford but this fine performance of St. Pauldoms, and gross darkness the people; but upon thee riseth the mighty Lord, and the glory of the Lord appeareth upon thee," is inconceivably fine. The influence of such music, set to such words, is all potent. It elevates while it purifies, and frees the soul from all that is gross and selfish It was magnificently executed; and the deep impression it produced was plainly visible on every face. As the solemn and inspiring chorale "Sleepers, awake! a voice is calling; proceeded, it was interesting to watch the audience, who Equal in effect, though of another kind, were the exquisitely pathetic chorale in F minor, "To Thee, O Lord, I yield my spirit" (which, it may be remembered, was performed by one of the military bands outside St. Paul's Cathedral during the solemn procession up the nave, when England's greatest soldier was consigned to his last earthly abode by the side of her greatest sailor), and the two quiet and lovely choruses of an oratorio which is more rarely given in a satisfactory_manner than any other, Israel in Egypt excepted-it would suffice to single it out from the rest as one of the great provincial music-meetings worthy to be remembered. Moreover, we cannot recall on any occasion a more attentive, and seemingly appreciative audience. No one left the hall until the conclusion; and the last chord of Beethoven's inspiriting "Hallelujah," which made the walls of the vast edifice reverberate with harmonious thunder, was the first signal for dispersion. The spectacle outside was as gratifying as it was imposing. The weather, threatening in the morning, was now superb, and the sun shone so brightly that its beams chased away the vapour, and bathed the smoky warehouses of Bradford in unwonted glory. The light danced upon the windows; and, viewed under such favourable circumstances, the exterior aspect of St. George's Hall gave much more cause for admiration than under the gloomy and uncomfortable influence of the day before, when dark clouds and capricious rain preponderated. The streets immediately contiguous to the hall were lined as far as the eye could carry, even with the aid of a strong magnifier, by a crowd so dense that the venerable metaphor of a "boundless sea of heads" was irresistibly suggested. Near to the building the people were so closely packed, that passage to and |