measure, furnishing two works: the so-called "Utrecht Te Deum" and the composition of the 100th Psalm ("Jubilate"). In return, the queen granted him a yearly salary of £200, thus taking him completely into her service. His leave of absence had expired without his being able to resolve upon leaving England. He learned that the elector was angry with him, but thought himself secure under the protection of the English queen. But now ensued the sovereign's sudden death (1714), and her successor upon the throne was the elector of Hanover. From the awkward predicament in which Handel now found himself he contrived to escape through the power of his art. Learning that the king proposed to make an excursion on the Thames, Handel composed for the occasion a piece of music whose lofty beauty won for him the royal pardon. Under the name of "Water Music," it grew popular and familiar. [Illustration: HANDEL'S FATHER. GEORGE HANDEL,--valet and surgeon to the prince of Saxe Magdeburg. The subjoined verse praises his skill, benevolence and fidelity.] From this time it was decided that England should become Handel's second home. Only as a visitor did he see his fatherland again, and it was during his first prolonged sojourn in 1716 that he accomplished his last great vocal composition in the German language. After the pattern of the Italian oratorios, a prominent resident of Hamburg, Barthold Heinrich Brockes, had written a rhymed poem on the Passion, which, because it was in sympathy with the Italianizing spirit of the day, was eagerly seized upon by the German composers. Keiser, Telemann, Mattheson and Stölzel set it to music; even Sebastian Bach took some aria texts from it for his "_Johannes Passion_." Its attraction for Handel lay no doubt in the Italian form of the poem and the possibility of applying for once the skill in composition acquired in Italy to a text in his mother tongue. He was far from intending to come to the rescue of the evangelical church music of Germany, for into this domain this Passion music cannot possibly be drawn, although Brockes, by the introduction of a narrating evangelist and the addition of chorals, had made some concessions in this direction. It is, therefore, unjust to draw any sort of comparison between the "Passion" of Handel and that of Bach. From the fact that he afterwards made use of the most essential portions of his work in his oratorios, Handel has distinctly shown the character of his music.