After Allegri, at the end of the seventeenth century, the old mediæval style died out, and Durante, Scarlatti, and others of that school appear as a link between the old and new. After them, with their strong tendencies towards elaboration of the instrumental accompaniment, comes Bach, whose mass in B minor, now familiar to us, thanks to Mr. Goldschmidt and the Bach Choir, stands alone. It is not only free from ancient ecclesiastical tradition, but it is actually prophetic in its marvellous harmonic changes and combinations. It is also in style almost an oratorio. Later on we have magnificent masses by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, but more like sacred cantatas than masses. To quote Mr. Rockstro, he rightly says, “Their style has steadily kept pace, step by step, with the progress of modern music, borrowing elasticity from the freedom of its melodies, and richness from the variety of its instrumentation; clothing itself in new and unexpected forms of beauty at every turn; yet _never aiming at the expression of a higher kind of beauty than that pertaining to earthly things, or venturing to utter the language of devotion in preference to that of passion_.” The italics are my own, and I suppose that it is owing to the fact that this individuality and frequent dramatic realism of the composer usurped the abstract sense of the words used, and the devotional idealism of the old schools, that not one note of any of them has ever been heard within the Sistine Chapel at Rome. The general distribution of the movements of the mass are, strange to say, the same to-day that it was in Palestrina’s time. A mass for the dead, called Requiem, is composed of different numbers, viz., “Requiem æternam dona eis,” “Kyrie,” the grand hymn, “Dies iræ,” “Domini Jesu Christo,” Sanctus and Benedictus, Agnus, and “Lux æterna.” Of the more modern specimens, those of Cherubini and Mozart, and of the most modern, that by Verdi, are all fine examples, the work by Mozart standing high above all the others. It was, as you will remember, mostly written on his deathbed. At the Reformation the mass disappeared from the English Church, and from then until 1840 no choral communions were written. Since the latter date, however, the English versions of the Sanctus, Kyrie, Creed, and Gloria have been used and set to music by most of the writers of Church music already named in connection with the anthem. [Illustration: A SERIOUS DISCUSSION.] DRESS: IN SEASON AND IN REASON. BY A LADY DRESSMAKER.