Of his not inconsiderable property, he bequeathed about £20,000 to his relatives in Germany. He went through life unmarried, and posterity has not learned whether the prospect of founding a family of his own ever opened itself before him. In figure he was tall and robust; his movements were clumsy, but his features were animated and dignified. He was easily moved to anger, but a certain element of humor served to break the force of his stormy outbreaks. The broken English in which he spoke had often a comical effect, especially in moments of excitement. Burney relates that he had a natural turn for wit and the gift of treating the most commonplace matters in an interesting manner. His ordinary expression was somewhat stern, (that he seldom laughed in his younger days is also related by Mattheson) but when he smiled it was like a sunbeam piercing a dark cloud. Unyielding determination, strong independence, sincere devoutness, a high sense of honor, fidelity and a noble philanthropy, which was always ready to offer help, were among the most marked traits of this man, whose greatness did not consist in his art alone. * * * * * In Handel and Bach the inborn talent for music of the German people finds a fuller expression than at any earlier or later period, nor have other nations furnished an instance so phenomenal. The reason lies partly in the fact that the two men, equally endowed by nature, differed from each other as widely as possible, and accordingly exercised their powers in the most opposite domains of art. Precisely in these two departments of music from which Bach held himself entirely aloof, the opera and the oratorio, Handel labored with untiring and exclusive energy. Organ and piano playing, to be sure, formed for him the starting-point of his development, but while Bach went on through his whole life in the path marked out from the beginning, Handel left it at the early age of eighteen and entered upon a wholly different career. Of Bach it can be said that he was an instrumental composer, and remained such to the end of his life. The medium through which Handel wished to express himself was that of song. Instruments which can be associated with the voice and form a setting for it he considered, and therefore treated as subordinate. And even where he allows them to work independently--in his piano compositions, in his concertos and sonatas of the most-varied arrangement--there is awakened in the hearer the feeling that he is being amused by a sweet, beautiful, thought-inspiring play, but still a _play_, in the truest meaning of the word. Handel first becomes entirely serious in his cantatas, operas and oratorios, and for this reason it is difficult to provide a place for him in the history of instrumental music. He stands by himself and not in the ranks. [Illustration: GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL. From an accurate cast of the head and shoulders of Roubillac's statue of Handel, in Westminster-Abbey.]