the annual commencement exercises of the institution for this purpose. Handel, the favorite of the royal court, was invited to add lustre to the celebration through his art; he was also included in the number of eminent men who were to be invested with the title of Doctor at the same time. This honor would have been declined by the musician on his own personal account, but as an artist he accepted, using the title rarely. The "Athaliah," written wholly in the interest of the occasion, was performed in Oxford on the 10th of July. Singers and instrumental performers were brought from London by Handel, and the festival, in the course of which "Esther" and "Acis and Galatea," as well as the "Utrecht Te Deum" and the "Jubilate" were given, was a brilliant success. The next oratorio was "Alexander's Feast," or the "Power of Music." It was finished in January, 1736, and brought out for the first time on the 19th of February. In writing this work, Handel had in mind the popular custom of celebrating the day of St. Cecilia by means of the art of which she was the patron. It was Purcell who inaugurated musical performances of this festive character on St. Cecilia's day, and among the poets who glorified it, Dryden stands pre-eminent with his two Cecilian odes. It was the greater of these which Handel took for the foundation of his work, employing the arrangement of Newburgh Hamilton. The impression produced by the very first performance was extraordinary, and the work was repeated four times in the same season, meeting with the speediest and most widespread success of any of Handel's oratorios, although it falls within the period when his best energies were devoted to operatic works. With the production of "Saul," in 1738, commences the long, uninterrupted series of oratorios in which Handel, who, instead of becoming embittered by the hard experiences of his life, was only roused by them to a more complete expression, poured out the fulness of his genius. Immediately after the "Saul" ensued the creation, in something less than a month, of his gigantic work: "Israel in Egypt." As now known, this consists of only two parts; but as it came from the composer's hands on the first of November, 1738, it was in three divisions. For the lament over the death of Joseph with which it opened, Handel had used the funeral anthem written after the death of the noble Queen Caroline in 1737. He was probably reluctant to allow this beautiful work, which, in its original form, was only available for the occasion which called it forth, to sink into oblivion. At the same time we see that he himself must have considered the style of his anthems as very closely related to that of his oratorios. It was owing to a misunderstanding that, after the death of Handel, the second and third parts of the "Israel" were made to stand for the whole work, while the funeral anthem was printed by itself. But neither on its first performance (April 4, 1739) nor on