The artist gives us his best--gives it to us forever, for our very own. He grows aweary and lies down to sleep--to sleep and wake no more, deeding to us the mintage of his love. And as love does not grow old, neither does Art. Fashions change, but hope, aspiration and love are as old as Fate who sits and spins the web of life. The Artist is one who is educated in the three H's--head heart and hand. He is God's child--no less are we--and he has done for us the things we would have liked to do ourselves. The classic is that which does not grow old--the classic is the eternally true. "Did you meet Michelangelo in Rome?" Why, it is the most natural question in the world! At Stratford I expected to see Shakespeare; at Weimar I was sure to meet Goethe; Rubens just eluded me at Antwerp; at Amsterdam I caught a glimpse of Rembrandt; in the dim cloisters of Saint Mark's at Florence I saw Savonarola in cowl and robe; over Whitehall in London I beheld the hovering smoke of martyr-fires, and knew that just beyond the walls Ridley and Latimer were burned; and only a little way outside of Jerusalem a sign greets the disappointed traveler, thus: "He is risen--He is not here!" * * * * * In one of his delightful talks--talks that are as fine as his feats of leadership--Walter Damrosch has referred to Handel as a contemporary. Surely the expression is fitting, for in the realm of truth time is an illusion and the days are shadows. George Frederick Handel was born in Sixteen Hundred Eighty-five, and died in Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. His dust rests in Westminster Abbey, and above the tomb towers his form cut in enduring marble. There he stands, serene and poised, accepting benignly the homage of the swift-passing generations. For over a hundred years this figure has stood there in its colossal calm, and through the cathedral shrines, the aisles, and winding ways of dome and tower, Handel's music still peals its solemn harmonies. At Exeter Hall is another statue of Handel, seated, holding in his hand a lyre. At the Foundling Hospital (which he endowed) is a bust of the Master, done in Seventeen Hundred Fifty-eight; and at Windsor is the original of still another bust that has served for a copy of the very many casts in plaster and clay that are in all the shops. There are at least fifty different pictures of Handel, and nearly this number were brought together, on the occasion of a recent Handel and Haydn Festival, at South Kensington. When Gladstone once referred to Handel as our greatest English Composer, he refused to take it back even when a capricious critic carped and sneezed. Handel essentially belongs to England, for there his first battles were fought, and there he won his final victory. To be sure, he did some preliminary skirmishing in Germany and Italy; but that was only getting his arms ready for that conflict which was to last for half a century--a conflict with friends, foes and fools.