living things, exulting in their existence--or as if the author had borrowed the lyre of the morning stars, that sang the glories of the "new created world."--The celebrated chorus, "The Heavens are telling the glory of God," is unquestionably the boldest conception of Haydn. Its harmony has the most astonishing richness and variety, and the leading air is almost unexceptionably beautiful. Yet it may be called a chorus in theory only; for it requires the fullest choir of the finest voices and most refined tastes,--and no community of any country can furnish a hundred and fifty singers, capable of performing it, even with a tolerable degree of spirit, judgment and correctness. By this remark I mean merely, that the original conception of the author, and that with which every one who feels its true beauty and force is filled, upon studying, or hearing it,--can never be fully realized and carried out, and filled up, by the finest combination of human powers. There have not been wanting writers upon the beautiful in music, who have denounced what they are pleased to call attempts at picturesque, in the "Creation" of Haydn. Their arguments proceed upon the trifling nature of the results produced by imitations, as unworthy the dignity of an art so refined. The feelings awakened by the gradual developement of the work of creation in this immortal work are certainly far superior in their nature to those imputed by such writers to the admirers of what they call depictive music;--and I cannot believe that these objectors can have listened to the oratorio they criticise, either with the physical or rational ear. Had they, we should have heard nothing like an imputation of an unsuccessful imitation of trifling originals. They would have seen no other use of the musical picturesque than perfectly consists with true descriptiveness of the subject celebrated. The Creation is a grand panorama; its object was to impress the hearer with the realities it commemorates. Its author was engaged two whole years upon it, and gave as a reason for his absorption in the task, that he meant it to last a great while. He has composed a work which addresses itself to the mind in such a manner, as to call up to the eye the landscape, as well as to the ear the sounds, and to the conception the animation and motion of the scenes described. Surely a beautiful thought, a fine description, an impassioned sentiment, impressed upon the mind and memory by a strong association with almost all the senses at once, are more likely to become inseparably entwined among the very fibres of the heart, than a cold, abstract description of the same subject, without the intervention of such associations. I should pity the man who could utter such a criticism, while listening to the performance, or even reading the score of this most splendid oratorio. From the commencement,--conveying the idea of primeval chaos,--through the gradual gathering of the earth and sea, and the things which each