"How shall I describe what to-day has been in the Music Hall? After such an intense enjoyment it is a hard task to express one's feelings in cold words. It was a great day for the festival, a great day for the performers, a great day for Mendelssohn, a great day for art. Four da-capos in the first part, four in the second, making eight encores, and at the close the calling out of the composer,--are significant facts when one considers that it was the rigid injunction of the Committee that the public should not testify its approval by applause. But the enthusiasm would be checked by no rules; when the heart is full, regulations must stand aside. It was a noble scene, the hall filled with men, the galleries gay with ladies, like so many tulip-beds, added to the princely music and their thundering bravas." Mendelssohn himself on the day after the performance writes to his brother in Berlin:-- "No work of mine ever went so admirably the first time of execution, or was received with such enthusiasm by both the musicians and the audience, as this oratorio. It was quite evident at the first rehearsal in London that they liked it, and liked to sing and play it; but I own I was far from anticipating that it would acquire such fresh vigor and impetus at the performance. Had you only been there! During the whole two hours and a half that it lasted, the large hall, with its two thousand people, and the large orchestra were all so fully intent on the one object in question that not the slightest sound was to be heard among the whole audience, so that I could sway at pleasure the enormous orchestra and choir, and also the organ accompaniments. How often I thought of you during the time! more especially, however, when 'the sound of abundance of rain' came, and when they sang and played the final chorus with _furore_, and when, after the close of the first part, we were obliged to repeat the whole movement. Not less than four choruses and four airs were encored, and not one single mistake occurred in the first part; there were some afterwards in the second part, but even these were but trifling. A young English tenor[6] sang the last air with such wonderful sweetness that I was obliged to collect all my energies, not to be affected, and to continue beating time steadily."