And so the oratorio goes on, the assemblage paying a grave and decorous attention to the music, and bearing themselves far more like a congregation than an audience. They are so devotedly rapt in the magnificent performance, that I expect every moment to hear the vast mass of them join in the choruses; and when, at the first bar of the sublime “Hallelujah Chorus,” the hearers all _stand up_, the singers in the orchestra seem to me like priests. In truth, I think that to hear an oratorio, chastens and purifies the mind, and that we go away from those grand performances wiser and better men. There is a natural disinclination to return—at least, immediately—to frivolous and trivial pursuits, after listening to those solemn and ennobling strains. I know that some exist upon whom music has no effect whatsoever; but I believe that the vast majority of mankind are influenced for good or evil by the sound of music. The most heartless woman in the world whom I know, cries when she hears “Kathleen ma vourneen.” Napoleon could never listen to “_Lascio ch’io piango la cruda sorte_,” without crossing himself. How grandly does John Dryden set forth this theory in his immortal St. Cecilian Ode! with what exquisite art has he shown us Alexander moved to alternate joy, pride, shame, weeping, frenzy, as old Timotheus sweeps the lyre in varied strains! [Illustration: TEN O’CLOCK P.M.: AN ORATORIO AT EXETER HALL.] Now, in sober broughams and in hack-cabs—driven, I hope, by regenerated cabmen, who give tickets before they are asked for them, and never charge more than thirty per cent. above the legal fare—or haply, if the night be fine, on foot, the serious audience, well cloaked and bonneted, leave the hall. For half an hour afterwards, the Exeter Hall side of the Strand, both east and west, is dotted with serious groups in search of the last omnibus, or, perchance, boldly walking home. I wonder how many of the serious ones know anything of the thoroughfare. They may traverse it at noonday, or pass down it every morning for twenty years in omnibuses on their way to the city; but do they know anything of the night aspect of that most mysterious of London thoroughfares? It is better, perhaps, that they should not. Minute by minute they grow scarcer, and by ten minutes to eleven there are no serious groups in the Strand. They are all gone home to supper—hot ones, very probably, for the serious world is not at all unaddicted to good living—and sober. I, too, have liberty to go and sup, if I so choose; but not, alas! to bed. Still have I work to do, and for some hours. ELEVEN O’CLOCK P.M.—A SCIENTIFIC CONVERSAZIONE, AND AN EVENING PARTY.