with its full, legitimate results. Good men, in immense numbers, will continue to neglect it until its character is reformed.

But we must be more specific in our observations. The more distinguished musicians of our own country recognize two large classes of specimens under the general appellation of sacred music; the one belonging strictly to the church, the other to the concert room or the oratorio. The one class purports to be adapted to religious worship; the other to tasteful amusement or display of talent. The one essays to lead the worshipper in those walks of chaste simplicity which allow him to school his affections, call home his wandering thoughts and fix them upon divine things; the other makes its appeal to the imagination, shows us the worshippers at a distance, and makes us spectators of the scene, delighted, it may be, with the dignity, the more than human rhapsody which seems to animate the throng. In short, the one leads us into the realities of religious worship; the other into the mere personations of religion. The one is real life; the other, imaginative representation.

A single example may sufficiently illustrate our meaning. "To thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, Holy, holy,'" etc. If I feel myself thus directly addressing the great God in an attitude of religious worship, I shall be filled with awe, and sink in prostration before the divine Majesty as if "my words" were "swallowed up." In proportion as spiritual influences prevail, I shall be inclined like the prophet of old who heard the same theme from angelic worshippers, to cry "woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips." But if simply enjoyed as in dramatic personation, I strive to paint the raptures of the unseen world, I may break forth in the boldest strains of a celebrated "Te Deum," without at all offending against the received principles of taste. I may be as clamorous and as full of repetition as I choose, except, perhaps, in regard to the single word "holy," and no one will complain. The loftiest martial strains of a Haydn or a Beethoven, containing more of earthly joy than of heavenly rapture, will seem most in character with the admiring multitude. Genius overpowers every thing. Taste is gratified. The imagination kindles and burns, but not with holy fire. The emotions are temporarily excited, but the heart remains cold.

I

say received principles, because, after all, the principles are not just, even in a dramatic point of view.

Now the question more immediately before us is not whether the same religious themes inay or may not with Christian propriety, under different circumstances, be used for each of these specific purposes, but whether they may be consistently used for both purposes at once; or, rather, since there is every where so much want of discrimination, whether the one of these purposes is not continually liable to be frustrated by the ill-timed inconsiderate application of the other. Devotional music in the exhilarating concert-room, for instance, is seldom found to be in keeping with the humor of the place; and concert music must have a still more undesirable influence when heard in the solemn assembly. At the same time, the true character of a piece in these respects is not always readily determined. To this end, we must look beyond the title of the piece, the character of the words, or the reputation of the composer, or we shall be greatly wanting in discrimination.

The most celebrated transatlantic composers and professors, we are sorry to say, have too generally disregarded this distinction. They have not even recognized the entire claims of a personated devotion. Surrounded by the imposing splendors of a nominal Christianity, they have mistaken the shadow of religion for the substance. They have ministered to the imagination, rather than to the heart; and even this without the advantage of enlightened discrimination. And what is personation? The least that it can imply is, that the composer and the executant both form right conceptions of characters and things, and execute their allotted tasks under the influence of appropriate emotions. In relation to secular subjects, this is easily done, because the nature of such subjects is open to common observation. Any one who has human sympathies can readily frame right conceptions of the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, remembrances and anticipations, of a given personage, because these things are, in some important sense, common to all. But in relation to religious subjects the case is far otherwise. Vital religion, though a precious reality to every one who embraces it, is not well understood by those who have never learned its nature by personal experience. And, unfortunately, the great musicians to whom we allude appear to have been too much under the dominion of a worldly spirit to yield themselves up to the effectual influences of a heavenly tuition. This is sufficiently obvious from the details of their history.

We laugh at the simplicity of the painter who, in reference to the passage in the "Te Deum," "continually do cry, represented his angels with tears in their eyes. But a similar mistake is made by the composer, when he paints the peculiar enjoyments of the Christian in a gloomy dress, or represents his sorrows by a smile, his solicitudes by the calm of tranquillity, or his faintest heavenly aspirations by the outbreakings of terrestrial joy. This, in the higher walks of composition, is not unfrequently done. Serious as the accusation is, we need not here apply for testimony to the aggrieved party. No one who attentively reads the "Lives of Haydn and Mozart," will suspect the talented writer of that work of the least taint of religious enthusiasm. He was a man of the world, in the midst of cultivated society, in the heart of Europe; and few could have had better opportunities for critical observation than he enjoyed in regard to the things of which he treats. Speaking of the progress of the Italian style, during the last century, he says that "the music of the church and the theatre became the same. A gloria in excelsio was nothing but a lively air, in which a happy lover might very well express his felicity, and a miserere, a plaintive strain, full of tender languor. Airs, duets, recitatives, and even sportive rondeaus, were introduced into the prayers!

The same writer, though a passionate admirer of Haydn, was not wholly blind to the faults of that great man in his treatment of sacred themes. He represents him in general as avoiding the profane lightness of the Italian school, yet allows him to have often exceeded in lightness the limits of propriety. He says also, that his faults were sometimes more positive. He could occasionally introduce comic passages; and even paint the fascinations of sin instead of the penitence of the sinner! No trifling faults, truly.

Such testimony as the above is not easily set aside. We behold in it, not the accusations of an enemy, but the admissions of a friend, and as the works referred to are before us, we have also the means of ascertaining for ourselves the reality of the things described. Not only are these admissions well founded, but the half is not told. Nor is the celebrated Haydn the only great composer, who often fails in his conception of religious subjects. All the distinguished men of the same school, so far as we have been able to examine their works, appear to have labored under the same infirmity. And if this is true of the highest geniuses of any age or country, what might be ex

pected from their countless admirers and imitators? And if the men fail thus when composing expressly for the church, how much more might we expect them to fail in the dramatic use of religious themes? These failures are not indeed perpetual; but they are sufficiently frequent to produce many an unconscious abuse, not to say desecration, of religious themes.

It affords us no pleasure to speak thus of the great masters of song. We would not at all depreciate their talents or lessen their reputation. We should as soon think of questioning the genius of a Virgil, a Homer, or a Milton, as to say ought against the high ascendency these composers have gained in the musical world. Let their works be thoroughly studied, and they will be but the more venerated and admired. Yet, on this very account, it becomes the more necessary to expose the one general characteristic which has such a disastrous tendency on the influence of religious music. The public taste in this country is much in favor of that music which is of a high rhapsodic character, because it is tasteful, lively, energetic, and in keeping with the general excitability of an enterprising age: and thus it happens, in many circles, that concert-music, which is very unsuited to the worship of the sanctuary, passes for music which is really devotional.

And what shall be said of the executants of a corresponding rank? We once heard the piety of a preacher called in question, not because he seemed deficient in sensibility, but because he was wont to weep in the wrong places. While discoursing of the Prodigal Son, for instance, he would melt at the thought of feeding upon husks, but be little touched at the scene of paternal recognition, which is of such thrilling interest to the pious heart. But this was nothing in comparison with what is witnessed in the higher walks of professional execution. In the performance of sacred music, they will not even consent to weep in the wrong places. Their sympathies are differently employed. They have a reputation to maintain, a talent to display, and an audience to gratify, at the expense of every thing save the single article of "filthy lucre." Honored exceptions there doubtless have been-but we hazzard nothing in saying, that the men whose lives are devoted to the secular drama are not the individuals who, in the oratorio, the sacred concert, the choir, or the organ loft, will enter, even with dramatic propriety, into the sweetness and tender solemnity of religious themes. These are not at all to their liking. They have no true taste

for them, no just conception of their meaning and importance. The same is also true of many a distinguished performer, who, without visiting the theatre, has acquired an exclusive taste for secular music. How can any one, who is a habitual neglecter of religious themes, be supposed on the spur of the occasion to enter fully into the spirit of them? The thing is impossible. They must be studied and heartily appreciated before right conceptions will generally be formed.

But let us suppose, for a moment, that the thing is not so: that the worldly-minded can exhort us to lay up treasures in heaven, the skeptical hold forth the language of Christian experience, and the neglecters of religion remind us of Him, who "was despised and rejected of men,"-that all this can be done in such melting tones as to move a heart of marble to tenderness-will this answer the religious ends of sacred music? We often find passages which assume the affirmative of this question with as much confidence as if it had been established by the soundest arguments, and confirmed by the most undoubted experience. One of the more respected class of dramatical performers, for example, says of his professional friend at an English concert, that "his Lord, remember David,' and his O come, let us worship,' breathed pure religion. No divine from the pulpit, though gifted with the greatest eloquence, could have inspired his auditors with a more perfect sense of duty to their Maker than he did, by his melodious tones and chaste style." Other writers might be quoted much to the same purpose; while multitudes show, by their management, that the same opinion is entertained. Well, if the question be so decided, if expressive tones, with corresponding sentimentalities, are so easily obtained from the irreligious, and are alone of such wonderful efficacy in religious worship, why, let us at once invite the prima donnas into the choir, and all will soon be right. On the same general principle, also, let us invite our Garricks and Keans into the pulpit, and constitute our masters in elocution the sole readers of the liturgy! This would be acting consistently. It would be treating the equally solemn offices of preaching and prayer and praise alike. But no-we must come back to primitive habits and principles. We must call back the Asaphs, the Hemans, and the Jeduthuns, and others of the same spirit, to shed the right influence upon the undertaking. Then, and not till then, will the legitimate results of religious music be fully restored.