In character Palestrina was devout, pious, frugal, and industrious. Though so few records exist, we can guess his industry from the mass of the work he achieved, and his honor and sense of responsibility from his anxiety when the support of his family seemed in danger. As to his piety, all his music is one eloquent demonstration of it. Nor is it without verbal testimony in the dedications and inscriptions on his manuscripts. In dedicating his first book of motets to Cardinal d’Este he expressed his artistic convictions as follows: “Music exerts a great influence on the minds of mankind, and is intended not only to cheer these, but also to guide and control them, a statement which has not only been made by the ancients, but which is found equally true to-day. The sharper blame, therefore, do those deserve who misemploy so great and splendid a gift of God in light or unworthy things, and thereby excite men, who of themselves are inclined to all evil, to sin and misdoing. As regards myself, I have from youth been affrighted at such misuse, and anxiously have I avoided giving forth anything which could lead anyone to become more wicked or godless. All the more should I, now that I have attained to riper years, and am not far removed from old age, place my entire thoughts on lofty, earnest things, such as are worthy of a Christian.” When, in 1594, Palestrina died, almost his last words, whispered to his son Igino, directed the publication of his latest manuscript works, “to the glory of the most high God, and the worship of his holy temple.” A sentence in the dedication by Palestrina just cited affords us as serviceable a key as we could desire to the fundamental temper or mood of mind which underlay the type of art he represents. The technical peculiarities of this art already traced in the foregoing pages, do not in themselves explain it; they are, indeed, but manifestations of a deeper spirit underneath, a spirit that was as characteristic of the mediæval mind as idealism is of the modern mind. Incommensurate as were the technical resources of the mediæval composer with ours, their whole mental temper and outlook upon life was in even more striking contrast with the modern attitude. We have, therefore, next to ask: What was the most characteristic peculiarity of this age? What was its most pervasive general trait? What was the one dominant quality in which most of Palestrina’s contemporaries, for all their minor differences, were alike?