after a weakly contrasting middle portion, is the image of a self-centred exclusiveness. The direct opposite of this form is that in which a slow movement is followed by a more rapid one, so that the feeling passes from rest to motion, from contemplation to activity. This is certainly the dramatic form, and therefore Handel's opera music is not dramatic in a narrow sense. But no one will attempt to deny that his style has also its artistic justification and is sure of producing great effects whenever the hearer concentrates his attention upon the characteristic picture presented, rather than upon the suspense resulting from an uninterrupted continuous action. With inexhaustible inventive power, Handel has drawn such pictures in his operas. No reproach is less deserved than that he has acquired a stereotyped manner and turns out his productions as if they were cast in a mould. Whenever the same forms and turns recur in his works, they express exactly what is demanded by the situation and is necessary for the accomplishing of a powerful effect. For the rest, he seizes every problem firmly and repeats himself as little as the circumstances of our lives are exactly repeated, even if they sometimes seem to show a general resemblance. His work, to be sure, lies almost wholly in the province of simple sensations--complicated, romantic, psychological conditions are out of his sphere. So-called _ensemble_ movements, in which different persons with strongly-contrasting emotions confront each other, whose utterances it has become one of the most interesting tasks of the latter opera-composers to weave together upon the ground of a certain universal sympathy, are of comparatively rare occurrence in his compositions. Just as little does he concern himself to give expression to a mood which proceeds from a single scene, considered as such. The instrumental accompaniment, which finds herein one of its heaviest tasks, is always extremely simple and restrained. Everything really essential finds utterance through the singer. Singers of the highest order are therefore demanded by his operas, those who have not only command of the most highly perfected technique of their art, but whose creative mind enables them to become thoroughly imbued with the spirit of a piece of music. He lived in a time when the art of song on every side was in a condition of the highest cultivation, and it was under such influences that he was able to create those perfect specimens of characteristic and artistic song, found in almost superabundant measure in his operas. Because in our time this art has been lost, the beauty of Handel's opera arias remains for the most part concealed from us, but that another change will one day take place there is no doubt. An immediate revolution, to be sure, is not to be expected. Music has fallen by degrees from that lofty height, and only by degrees can she again attain unto it. What the operas of Handel will then signify to the world