Nevertheless, we pardon the departure from the strict rules of the game, partly because of the welcome nature of good tidings so exultantly announced to us about all fear of punishment being o’er, and partly because the music is, throughout, so much stronger than the words that we lose sight of them almost entirely. Handel probably wrote as he did from a profound, though perhaps unconscious, perception of the fact that even in his day there was a great deal of humanitarian nonsense talked and that, after all, the tyrants were generally quite as good sort of people as the vanquished slaves. Having begun on this tack, it was easy to throw morality to the winds when he came to the words about all fear of punishment being over. Handel and Marriage To man God’s universal law Gave power to keep the wife in awe sings Handel in a comically dogmatic little chorus in _Samson_. But the universality of the law must be held to have failed in the case of Mr. and Mrs. M’Culloch. Handel and a Letter to a Solicitor Jones showed me a letter that had been received by the solicitor in whose office he was working: “Dear Sir; I enclose the name of the lawyer of the lady I am engaged to and her name and address are Miss B. Richmond. His address is W. W. Esq. Manchester. “I remain, Yours truly W. D. C.” I said it reminded me of the opening bars of “Welcome, welcome, Mighty King” in _Saul_: [Picture: Music score] Handel’s Shower of Rain The falling shower in the air “As cheers the sun” in _Joshua_ is, I think, the finest description of a warm sunny refreshing rain that I have ever come across and one of the most wonderfully descriptive pieces of music that even Handel ever did. Theodora and Susanna