We are now prepared to enter into a critical examination of the essential character of music as distinguished from plain chant. In the first place, we find, as we have already noted, that it is measured in its melody—that is, it is written, as it is said, in _time_; and, as a consequence of its lyrical movement, it became equally subjected to certain laws of versification and of phraseology corresponding to the stanza. When musicians began to write for the language of the church, and to set the sublime prose of her _Gloria in Excelsis_, _Credo_, etc., to its form of melody, this supposed necessity of making musical stanzas compelled the application of what is known in music as the theme, on which certain fanciful variations were built, shorter or longer, as the musician deemed necessary to complete his “work,” altogether forming a sort of Procrustean bed, on which the sacred words of the Liturgy were either dismembered or stretched by repetition in order to make them fit the melody. To make the “work” fit the words was not to be thought of; whence we judge it well for the peace of Mr. Richardson that Mozart and Haydn have departed this life. We remember, when a boy, long before we had made more than a child’s acquaintance with the modern “Masses,” squeezing the _Kyrie Eleison_ after this fashion on the framework of one of De Beriot’s celebrated airs for violin and piano, and gave ourselves as much credit for the originality of the “adaptation” as we are willing to give to the man who first of all (to the misfortune of true church chant) tried to compose a musical theme for the same words of prayer. We refer our readers to the late paper on “Church Music” in the August and September numbers of this magazine, and to the translation of the _Gloria in Excelsis_ of Mozart’s Twelfth Mass, as given in one of our former articles, as proofs of the perfectly outrageous extent to which this “adaptation” has already been carried. Now, we affirm, as a principle, that the expression of the “Prayer of sacrifice and of praise,” as we may term the Holy Mass and the recitation of the Divine Office, should be consonant with, and conformed to, the manner in which the church directs the celebration of the acts of the same. The celebrant and his ministers, the acolytes and the chorus, do not march, halt, turn about, or otherwise conduct themselves like soldiers or like puppets on wires, neither do they hop and glide and go through set figures like dancers. Melody in measure is therefore wholly unsuited to the character and spirit of the acts of the performers. In connection with the acts of Catholic worship, melody in measure is therefore incongruous, unmeaning, and absurd. For, to put the question plainly, if neither celebrant, ministers, chorus, nor people are to march—to do which, even in her sacred processions, would be shocking and profane—why sing a march? If they are not to waltz, why sing one? If the church does not want to