The oratorio being a "free theatre," it becomes necessary for the music to supply the place of the scenery. Thus its picturesque and descriptive _rôle_ is strongly developed and it is by this above all that Handel's genius so struck the English public. Camille Saint-Saëns wrote in an interesting letter to C. Bellaigue,[343] "I have come to the conclusion that it is the picturesque and descriptive side, until then novel and unreached, whereby Handel achieved the astonishing favour which he enjoyed. This masterly way of writing choruses, of treating the fugue, had been done by others. What really counts with him is the colour--that modern element which we no longer hear in him.... He knew nothing of exotism. But look at _Alexander's Feast_, _Israel in Egypt_, and especially _L'Allegro ed Penseroso_, and try to forget all that has been done since. You find at every turn a striving for the picturesque, for an effect of imitation. It is real and very intense for the medium in which it is produced, and it seems to have been unknown hitherto." Perhaps Saint-Saëns lays too much weight on the "masterly way of writing his choruses," which was not so common in England, even with Purcell. Perhaps he accentuates too much also the real influence of the French in matters of picturesque and descriptive music and the influence which it exerted on Handel.[344] Finally, it is not necessary to represent these descriptive tendencies of Handel as exceptional in his time. A great breath of nature passed over German music, and pushed it towards tone-painting. Telemann was, even more than Handel, a painter in music, and was more celebrated than Handel for his realistic effects. But the England of the eighteenth century had remained very conservative in music, and had devoted itself to cultivating the masters of the past. Handel's art was then more striking to them on account of "its colour" and "its imitative effects." I will not say with Saint-Saëns that "there was no question of exotism with him," for Handel seems to have sought this very thing more than once; notably in the orchestration of certain scenes for the two Cleopatras, of _Giulio Cesare_, and of _Alexander Balus_. But that which was constantly with him was tone-painting, the reproduction through passages of music of natural impressions, a painting very characterised, and, as Beethoven put it, "more an expression of feelings than of painting," a poetic evocation of the raging tempests, of the tranquillity of the sea, of the dark shades of night, of the twilight which envelops the English country, of the parks by moonlight, of the sunrise in springtime, and of the awakening of birds. _Acis and Galatea_, _Israel in Egypt_, _Allegro_, _The Messiah_, _Semele_, _Joseph_, _Solomon_, _Susanna_, all offer a wondrous picture gallery of nature, carefully noted by Handel with the sure stroke of a Flemish painter, and of a romantic poet at the same time. This