It is curious to note how many movements of anti-national character that have taken place in England since the time of the Tudors have had the support of the reigning house. Happily such days are past. It must be granted, however, that it was as natural on the part of Anne to grant shelter to her own country people, whether in Scotland or England, as it was on their part to seek it at her hands. To whatever causes the spread of Calvinism may be due, its effect on the nation generally was deplorable, and on music, particularly, absolutely fatal. The gloomy fanaticism that its teaching engendered not only prompted the entire suppression of music of every kind, wherever possible, but made it become an object of loathing and contempt, and what was found impossible to achieve by legislation was effected by local tyranny. In the conventicles that sprung up all over the country, music was pointed to as the ally of godlessness in its worst and most reprehensible form, and its use a thing that put the offender outside the pale of religious life. It needs little consideration to appreciate the result such teaching must necessarily have had on people who had come to accept these views as a revelation of Divine will. Its effect was, simply, not only to deaden, but to obliterate the very sense of the art among the masses--that art, too, that had been, formerly, one of the glories of England. In other directions, the results of this fanatic spirit are more concretely shewn, and the terrible evidence that the ancient churches of the country supply is sufficient to cause a shudder to the more tempered spirit of later ages. Practically, every one of these standing buildings affords evidence of the ruthless and destructive spirit that animated the authorities, and encouraged the common people and soldiery of the Commonwealth period to the utmost license in church desecration. The shocking and stupid brutality of the excesses perpetrated is, at once, a proof of the ferocious spirit that had been aroused, and the unappeasable hatred towards everything that could, in any way, suggest Catholic teaching or influence. When one reads of these atrocities, cold-blooded and calculated, they bring to the mind rather the sacking of ancient Rome by the Huns than the acts of civilised Englishmen living after the age of Shakespeare and Bacon. The noblest ornaments that the nameless monk-architects had raised to the glory of God, and the unceasing call to the piety of those living after, became a special mark for vengeance. To break down the altars, smash to fragments the sculptured representations of the Saviour, the Holy Virgin or the saints, was a source of gratification, and the occasion of licentious jest. For the destruction of musical instruments and the burning of manuscript music, we owe them--not gratitude.