of Rossini is nearer to instinct than the blank verse of Shakspeare. Who will say that genuine passion is not in this wonderful blank verse? But who is it that could impromptu speak it? So in the tones and harmonies of music. In both nature is carried into the region of art, out from the region of the actual; and within the region of art the musical utterance of nature is no more strange than the poetical utterance of nature. The moral view of the opera I do not here pretend to deal with. My purpose is to speak on music as an element of social culture; and it is not beyond the range of possibility that beautiful truths can be united dramatically to beautiful tones. If they cannot, then society has an immense loss; and if a noble story cannot be told by music—cannot be told to a moral purpose, then music ceases to be an art, as it has always been considered as associated with the divinest impulses of our nature. The abuses of which the opera is susceptible, are the abuses of which every form of art is susceptible. The artist stands—he has ever stood—upon a point between the human and divine. He may carry his art into gross sensualities of the human, or into lofty spiritualities of the divine. With the purification of society we shall have the purification of art and of the artist; and, therefore, I can see no reason why the opera might not be made effective in the best culture of social humanity. The lyrical expression of humanity is not less human than it is religious. The sacred lyrical drama, or oratorio, seems to be a remnant of the old mysteries. In those old mysteries a scriptural subject was exhibited to the people in a theatrical manner. The scriptural subject is all that remains of the old mystery in the modern oratorio. Stage, scenery, costume, have departed, and music takes their place. Music, therefore, in the oratorio, must, by its own power, indicate character, sentiment, passion; it must unite grandeur and diversity with unity of spirit; it must unite them with unity of expression. Yet even the oratorio has not escaped objection. But, if it has been wrongly attacked, it has been as unwisely defended. What, it is triumphantly asked, can inspire deeper devotion, more fervent piety, than the sacred composition of Handel? The mistake of the artiste on this side of the question, has its only measure in the mistake of the ascetic on the other. The strains, even of Handel, may be in unison with the highest and purest aspirations of the mind; but, in his divinest dramas, they are not of themselves—devotion. But, if high music confers a pleasure that harmonizes with the mind’s best faculties; if it prepares the mind’s best faculties for their best exercise; if by lifting the mind up into the sphere of great emotions from that of mean ones; if by withdrawing it from attention to selfish desires, it carries it into lofty thought, music exercises for the mind, even in the temple, a sacred power, though its power should yet only be artistic.