Out of this conclusion may come an inference as false as it is unattractive. If the lovers of "Lucia" are unprogressive, is, then, a great singer who still sings this part their leader? One may be tempted for a moment to utilize an apt jest and say with one of Mr. Gilbert's most delightful personages, "Bless you, it all depends." If the great artist is great only by reason of the manner in which she sings Lucia, then she is a star of the unprogressive. But if she chance to be Marcella Sembrich and to sing Mozart as beautifully as she sings Donizetti and with the added understanding which is essential to the interpretation of the classic of the progressive, then she is a leader of progress, although she still finds a field for the exercise of her talents in the world of the complacent. And if the artist be a tenor and be called Caruso, then he may sing Edgardo and die of an aromatic melody in the moonlight amid general blessings. THE ORATORIO OF TO-DAY Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings. Sing unto Him a new song: play skilfully with a loud noise. _Psalms_ xxxiii. 2, 3. England, where, as Mr. Gilbert was good enough to tell us in "Iolanthe," every child is born either a Liberal or a Conservative, leans both ways within the comfortable domain of oratorio. Chorus answers unto chorus and fugues pursue the even tenor (or bass, as the case may be) of their way, as they did in the brave days of old, when the Saxon sputtered in the Haymarket and threatened to pitch recalcitrant prima donnas out of windows. The festival of the three choirs preserves for the edification of a prosaic and stiffnecked generation the majestic sonorities of Handel and the subtle intimacies of the introspective Bach. The prancing of Elgar into this peaceful world with his pocket full of leading motives, with a dramatization of the very throne of the Invisible, and a suggestion of the Mary Magdalen of Wagner, neither astonishes nor stirs the critics. The harsh yell of the shofar disturbs them no more than the profound rumble of the contrabassoon. And since Mendelssohn left his "Elijah" ceaselessly clamoring for the costumes, the action, and the footlights of the stage, no Englishman is to be set staring by the projection of a sacred drama upon his field of vision.