winter of 1858, when the unlooked-for death of the excellent duchesse d'Orleans plunged him in the deepest affliction. Though all exertionsh ad been strictly forbidden him by his physician, he at once determined to go to England and attend the funeral. The sudden journey, the excitement of the melancholy scene, the chill of the sepulchral chapel, gave to Scheffer's shattered health a final blow. He insisted, after a second seizure, which occurred in England, on being removed to France. His journey was effected, though under circumstances of great suffering; and the tenderness of his daughter and her husband succeeded in transporting him to his country house at Argenteuil, where he could look once again at the shady garden in which he used to walk, and once more touch with his hand some of his unfinished pictures. But the organs of the heart, now diseased, laboured in their functions, and on the 18th of June, at the age of 63, Ary Scheffer died. As a painter he has left a high reputation; and while his character of virtuous independence raised him far above the baseness and servility of his times, his tenderness and truthfulness have left his memory justly cherished among a wide circle of friends.

LITURGICAL MUSIC.-III.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

OUR last letter brought us to the full maturity of the system inaugurated by pope Gregory. We saw the essential nature of the revolution effected by that pontiff over the music of St. Ambrose and of ancient times; and the consummation it received in the subsequent progress of musical science. And we came to the conclusion that, whether barbarously thrusting the sentence into the inexorable compartments of a musical machine called Canto fermo, or as barbarously stretching it on the no less inexorable rack of Fugue and Canon, an outrage was perpetrated on religion, language, and common sense.

Such being the condition of liturgical music at the time of our English reformation, we come to the inquiry whether, in that shaking of our spiritual heaven and earth, such a state of things was not shattered to pieces? The reply will form the substance of my present letter.

No small part of that reply is in a sentence: There was no "written word" for music. A law, of course, there was-written, through all ages, on the human beart. But even that law had been made of none effect through men's traditions; and there was no authoritative testimony to compare it with. Stiffened, petrified, denaturalized as it has become, there was no sooner the

demand for the articulate speech and the "vulgar tongue," than it was felt, at once, to be an anomaly. But it was an anomaly which, if not indignantly abolished, could only be remedied by degrees.

The first natural impulse was to abolish it. As early as 1536, i. e. in the time of Henry VIII., a protest was addressed to the king from the clergy of the Lower House against "The fautes and abuses of religion;" in which it is set forth that "singing and saying of mass at matins or even-song is but rorying, howling, whystling, conjurying, and jogelying." * When the reformation was firmly established, we find similar expressions in the second part of the homily "on the time and place of prayer." The Puritans put the matter in the strongest terms, when they prayed the parliament "that all cathedral churches may be put down, where the service of God is grievously abused by piping with organs, singing, ringing, and trowling of psalms from one side of the choir to the other, with the squeaking of chaunting choristers.†

We have arrived, then, at the distinct historic statement of one of those remarkable facts referred to in a former letter-a repugnance to liturgical music on the part of the very persons who took the greatest delight in congregational psalmody. What followed? Cathedrals were not put down. "Church-music" survived the shock. Elsewhere the capacities of the art to touch the feelings as well as the ear were developed from time to time. How fared it the while in the church?

The reply is eminently unsatisfactory. I should be sorry to imply that there was absolutely no improvement. Indeed, to suppose that the cold pedantries of the Contrapuntists, and the monstrous fooleries of Motett and Canon, could survive even the frivolity of the Restoration, were to suppose a miracle. But the improvement was not radical. We have but to cast a rapid glance at the progress of other things to see how vain were any expectations of a really efficient corrective.

When the religious movement of our Reformers was pushed to one extreme by the Puritans, and this latter movement indignantly met by the counter extreme of the High Church party, it could only be expected that the result should be a disastrous one. And so indeed it was. The mantle of the Reformers was too soon exchanged for the Babylonish garment; the bold but scriptural fervour of a Latimer for the unscriptural tameness of a self-styled orthodoxy not always even orthodox. There was, indeed, something very like a taming down of the national character. Political phrenzy seemed to have well-nigh burnt itself out. The war of principles found a middle point-of weariness, if not of concord. The courtly union of religious forms with irreligious practices, spread, like a fatal poison, through all ranks of the community. The church lost her life-blood in the only act that had the *Burney's Hist. vol. iii. p. 2. + Ibid. p. 29.

semblance of vigour. Other things looked the same way. Physical science, reconstructed by Bacon, gave a cold objective form to what was intellectually active. Heathen philosophy, almost another name for scepticism, assumed, in the growing revival of letters, the throne of what was subjective. As preachers became what bishop Horsley called "apes of Epictetus," poets began to compound for heartless profligacy, by putting so-called morals into classic verse. Amongst the greater number, dull common sense swore eternal friendship with childish ceremony. What remained of life was certainly not in the church. The sad portrait of church preaching quoted by Mr. Young from Robert Hall, is but too faithful a likeness of church religion in the days we are looking at.

"From that time," says that masterly writer, "the idea commonly entertained in England of a perfect sermon, was that of a discourse upon some moral topic, clear, correct, and argumentative; in the delivery of which the preacher must be free from all suspicion of being moved himself, or of intending to produce emotion in his hearers."

Such is the climax to which church religion had advanced, from the days of Laud to those of Whitfield and Wesley. Who can find here the conditions of reformation for church music? In fact, we have but to translate theological into musical terms, and we shall describe the essential features of our present subject.

That subject is, however, of sufficient import to demand its own account. But first let me say a word that will make that account the more intelligible.

Music, like every other art which is not a mere provision for man's bodily wants, is, in one degree or other, the out-going of his inner nature. Consisting of various elements, distinct and distinguishable, it becomes, to a degree far beyond what the unobservant can be aware of, a test and index of character. It will be found that, in proportion as the mere physical sense, or cold intellect, or the higher attributes of feeling and imagination predominate, in the same degree, disturbing causes apart, there is a corresponding predominance, whether in the individual or the community, in the music produced and cultivated. This is no abstract essay. Those who would see further into what Mr. Young has called the psychology of music, may find some suggestive remarks in the appendix to his little manual. I will only repeat what bears directly on our present subject, that music, in its various component elements, is really and truly the test and touchstone I have called it; and that, according as the sensuous combinations of harmony, or the contrivances to which both melody and harmony afford occasion, or the recondite laws and principles by which musical phenomena are regulated, or the outpouring of varied passions, or the mysterious reaching forth of fancy,-in proportion, I say, as one or other, or all of these combined, characterize the music habitually rejoiced in; so far composer, performer, and hearer, unconsciously photograph themselves. We return now to our subject.

From the time of Gregory the Great, to that of our own Henry, there was, for all western nations, one church religion, one church language, and one church music. In this latter time, of Henry VIII., the liturgy was already putting into the vulgar tongue. It was

*Review of "Zeal without Innovation."

Marbeck who, in the reign of Edward VI., first adapted a so-called melody to the English words of our common prayer. The work was afterwards harmonized by Tallis; and here is Dr. Burney's account of the result:

:

"The melody, fragments of ancient ecclesiastical Canto fermo,"(not even written, i. e. for the actual words it was sung to;) "the harmony admirable; the modulation so antique" (I omit the technical particulars) "as to produce a solemn effect very different from that of present times. The little melody and rhythm in all compositions of these times required all the harmony that could be crowded into it-notes multiplied without end, and difficulties created without effect."

This is just the old music with the new language; the reformation demanding the one, but the art not amending the other. We read the same precise account of Byrd, the no less celebrated pupil of Tallis. "It is impossible," continues the historian, "to regard the ingenuity and contrivance without wonder and admiration elaborate, especially in church music-ambitious, not only of vanquishing, but of inventing every kind of perplexity in the notes and arrangement of parts." Can any devout man say we have got yet to the composition of sound church music?

Dr. Aldrich, who died A.D. 1710, adapted the Latin compositions of Tallis and Byrd to English words for cathedral uses. Passing by the setting of notes to words they were not written for, we may say that if any one was worthy to handle the works of Tallis, it was the dean of Christ Church. Of his "Collection," then, our historian's account contains notices of "the crowded and elaborate harmony, and uncouth melody of all the pieces." Are we a step nearer yet to sound liturgical music?

We have no space for methodical statements. The broad fact is, that whereas, at the reformation, music, though so profoundly ingenious, had not learned those powers of expression which have made it since an articulate language-had not been permitted, as I before observed, to feel, but only to calculate; those succeeding periods in which music began to develop those powers, were just the emphatic times of spiritual declension-a declension under which feeling died gradually out from what continued to call itself church religion; a declension so deep and dreadful that the masterly writer already quoted does not hesitate to sum up his statement by telling us that, "the pulpit completely vanquished the desk: an almost pagan darkness in the concerns of salvation prevailed; and the English became the most irreligious people upon earth."+

But this very period is expressly vaunted as the golden age of English liturgical music. Can we wonder if those who so dignify it are content with scholastic proprieties; and have no care for the expressive utterance of the joys and sorrows of the inner life?

That even church music should retain, during such a period, all her semi-barbarism, would have been, as I have hinted, an incredible miracle. On the contrary, we should expect to find, and we do find, in the works of our Addison and Atterbury writers of music,-the

* Hist. of Music, vol. iii. p. 72.

+ Wilberforce says, "the peculiar doctrines of Christianity have almost altogether vanished from the view. Even in

many sermons scarcely any traces of them are to be found." ("Practical View of Christianity," 2nd Edit. p. 383.)

Greenes and Boyces of the time we have arrived at,-some proportionate infusion, from notoriously secular sources, of melody, grace, and a certain agreement of the music with the actual words. At the same time, speaking distinctly of what we are accustomed to call "Services," it is impossible to avoid feeling that the later music, like the earlier, falls miserably short of the requirements of the sanctuary. Both are, in fact, but varieties, however distant, of the "double double, toil and trouble." Both are essentially artistic. Both breathe, though in different ways, cold elaboration rather than devotional feeling. Both want the true inspiration, and the “summa ars." In neither do we recognise, "or ever we were aware," the contagious marks of the author's having been alone with God. I shrink from putting the matter in a personal form, or even pointing a silent finger to notorious facts. Thus much should need no proof from experience, that, since music professes to be a language, those who "shape and syllable" it that it may speak to God, should at least be first imbued with the spirit of devotion. To look, in an emphatically irreligious age, for normal specimens of devotional music, must be very like looking "for the living amongst the dead."

But Dr. Aldrich was dean of Christ Church; and a composer as well as compiler of church music. He has, in fact, left us a Te Deum (in G major) which I was once challenged to accept as a model. I feel some reluctance to record my first impression: but it seemed as if the learned dean had but faint remembrance that a Te Deum was not an academical exercise. For any thing like expressive language in the air, I was of course not entitled to look; for, in this respect, music was as yet but learning to lisp. For what I did find, I was, perhaps, still less prepared. Words and objects the most august— apostles, prophets, martyrs, cherubim, seraphim, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, judgment and mercy, prayer and praise-inexorably hurried on in one promiscuous tramp!

I have since asked myself, with the actual score before me, how such a result could come of a composition bearing everywhere the stamp of the profoundest learning, and, in many places, a noble and appropriate command of the powers of harmony. I can only refer it, instrumentally, to the almost total absence of sensible pauses, and a certain ruthless uniform continuousness that overruns devotional feeling, and seems disdainful even of logical propriety. It is true that the verses are sung antiphonally. But we get no mitigation, from this circumstance, of the unbroken continuousness I speak of-a continuousness of which the reader may have some notion if he will open his Prayer Book and note the following facts. From "We praise thee, O God," to "We therefore pray thee, help Thy servants"—that is, through all the changing topics of nineteen verses, there is not so much as one single sensible pause-not one single suspension, that is to say, of syllabic sound, whether by instrumental symphony or actual rest. But then, as if to complete the disregard to the verbal sense, whilst between the prayer "Govern them and lift them up," and the praise "Day by day we magnify thee," there is again no pause; between "We magnify thee," and the conclusion of the sentence, there is a distinct authoritative suspension of all the voices; after which, through all the lights and shadows of the remaining verses, there is again no further