The world and Nelson were on easy terms. He was a perfect gentleman, and the world saw nothing in his religion with which to quarrel. They ought to have seen it! Had the Cross of Christ been his one theme of boasting, they would both have seen and have resented it. Manners the most refined, connexions the highest, gentleness, and a spirit of unbounded philanthropy, would have given him no immunity. The biting sneer, the cold contempt, the open hatred of the world of fashion, would have been his lot, just as they were the lot of Wilberforce, Gisborne, Thornton, and the "Clapham sect." We see nothing of this; and the reason is, he did not provoke the world's hatred by simply "glorying in Christ Jesus "his "Lord," as did St. Paul.

His theology was radically wrong. The very title, "The Christian Sacrifice," to the volume on the Lord's Supper, is enough. He did not see the real nature of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ in all its fulness. His work on the Festivals of the Church is, in consequence, pervaded by a legal spirit; it is in fact justification after the Romish sort, partly by the deeds of the law, partly by the Cross of Christ; the very error under which the elder Venn and Berridge, and the devoted pastor of Heyworth, lived long and laboured as in the fire, and yet "wrought no deliverance" for the souls of others, and found no real comfort for their own. At length the day broke in upon them; they were in a new world, and they discovered and avowed that they had hitherto lived in vain, and spent their strength for nought. And now the world's admiration was converted into scorn; for they gloried in the Cross, and the shame of the Cross, of course, was theirs. Nelson appears, in common with many others, whose knowledge of the things of God is imperfect and even erroneous,—to have had, in practice, a much purer faith than he had when his pen was in his hand. He seems to have rested only on the merits of the Redeemer; but this is not the doctrine of his books nor of the school to which he belonged.

LITURGICAL MUSIC.-II,

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SIR, The four remarkable parts which formed the substance of my former letter, and, I may add, the paradox with which it terminated, condense themselves into a very simple and practical conclusion, viz., that the power of music, as a means of expressing and exciting the moral feelings, has been always proportionate to the degree in which rhythm and melody have formed its predominating elements; and vice versa. That conclusion, short and

simple as it may seem, is not only of such moment as regards all liturgical music, but is in such danger of being swamped and lost in the prevailing passion for the technicalities of musical science, that I cannot content myself without some further account of the

matter.

In essaying this, I am about to assume very bold—some will say very heretical ground. It is for no idle purpose. If I have any approach to hesitation, it is not because I am not sure of my position, or shrink from consequences; but because I am under necessity of eliminating, from a very extensive and complicated subject, its master facts, and of implying inferences that seem to impugn the established fabric of sacred music, without the opportunity of defining, as I could wish, the proper limits, exceptions, and qualifications, whether of the inferences or of the facts. But I shall speak "as unto wise men." They will understand the conditions, and judge accordingly.

Let me first, however, assure your readers, that I shall employ no terms with which I may not reasonably assume that they are already, or will at once become, familiar. The constructive laws of music are recondite enough: its influences touch, for good or evil, the most unlettered. The great principles, therefore, by which those influences may be duly exercised in the sanctuary, cannot be innocently ignored by any intelligent member of a Christian church. There is, in fact, a certain point up to which it is not true for a man of ordinary capacity to say, "I am fond of music: but I understand nothing about it." Beyond that point I have no present intention of going.

Of the precise structure, therefore, of music in early times, it is of little consequence that we have but little knowledge: of its power over human hearts we cannot but form a very exalted notion. The very legends of Orpheus and Arion have but emblazoned, as I have already said, with poetic imagery, a truth wonderful enough in its own integrity. Trees, stones, and dolphins may not have really followed the minstrel. There may have been some "passion" that even music could not "raise and quell." There are proofs enough, notwithstanding, that ancient music was at least as eloquent as it was simple. Of this latter quality, also, we hear wonderful things. It is even asserted, as I have said, that it was unisonous; consisting, that is, of pure melody, as distinguished from harmony. And it is thus some understand the record of the four thousand singers and four thousand players on instruments making "one sound" at the dedication of Solomon's Temple.* The words do not necessitate such a reading. Thus much, however, is certain, that all liturgical music in ancient times was very simple; that it was the emphatic utterance or strengthening of the words; and that it was reserved for comparatively modern times to superadd-for better or for worse-those

* 2 Chron. v. 13.

accumulations of harmony, those intricacies of melody, and that consequent comparative subordination of the words to the notes, which characterize, more or less, all the ecclesiastical music that has assumed the name of "classical."

Into the earlier history of music, I have no care to lead your readers. There is one distinct epoch on which I would fix their very serious attention. I have already referred to that famous confession of St. Augustine, in which he speaks of his "conversion under the melody of the church." Now, we know that this melody was nothing else than the Ambrosian chant. It becomes, therefore, a question I may almost call vital, How far does our own so-called "church music" resemble, or differ from, that music or melody of St. Ambrose? Of the inferences that may hang on the answer, I will say nothing at present. What then is the fact?

Why, that what we have been taught to call, in a special and normal sense, "church music," has descended, by musical succession, and grown by traceable steps from that of Pope Gregory the Great; and that his music, as compared with that of St. Ambrose, involved a revolution.

Of the reality of that revolution the least initiated may get some notion from a simple anecdote. I remember asking, once, an ecclesiastical authority to tell me what was the essential dif ference between the Ambrosian and the Gregorian chants. His reply I shall never forget. "The one," he said, "is just the music of the church, and the other that of the conventicle." I made no answer. I cannot say, literally, "Obstupui:" for I trea sured it up in my heart that the music under which St. Augustine was converted was not what has been ecclesiastically denominated "the music of the church.”

But what, then, was the discriminative character of the Ambrosian music? We will refer this weighty question to our wellknown English historian. Dr. Burney tells us that, whilst no actual vestige of it has been preserved, "this much at least is certain, that it retained the rhythmical character, which was the distinguishing mark of the Jewish music."* I scruple not to put these words in Italics.

And what, then, was the revolution that converted music from "the conventicle”—or cathedral of St. Ambrose—to “the church" -or Papal chapel of St. Gregory? The same historian tells us that

Gregory increased the ecclesiastical modes" (tones or scales) "from four to eight; adopted the Roman character instead of the Greek; and introduced a new species of chanting, termed, from its gravity, ⚫ Canto fermo,' in which the notes were either all of a length, or, at least, of no stated measure." †

* Burney's Hist. of Music, vol. ii. pp. 3 and 7.

+ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 15.

Let us see what all this involved.

. Of the first of these alterations, as it was rather scientific or æsthetic than religious, and has now surceased, save amongst Papists and semi-Papists, I shall say nothing; the other alteration was the passage of a moral rubicon.

Dr. Burney, commenting on another stage of musical history, observes that

"Almost all the meaning, beauty, and energy of a series of sounds depend on the manner in which they are measured and accented. If all the notes were of equal length, and unmarked by a superior degree of force and spirit, it would have no other effect on the hearer than to excite drowsiness;"*-or, as we should say, in these days of physical science, to mesmerize him.

A

We see, then, in the light even of this passage, the essential nature of Pope Gregory's revolution. The eloquent, spirit-stirring music of preceding tunes-the music of Miriam and Deborah, and David and Asaph-the music of the temple service of the "hymns and spiritual songs" of the Apostles, and of the persecuted primitive church of Christ through six successive centuries—had been characterized by that rhythmical element to which this judicious historian and critic attributes its essential attributes; and this characteristic element was systematically broken down, he tells us, by Pope Gregory. This, however, is but half the story. What was lost to music, as music, may well be witnessed to by the musician; what was lost to music as a vehicle for words of prayer may be referred to the prayerful reader. If music, deprived of rhythm, becomes tame, meaningless, and soporific, what shall we say of a musical recitation of "fervent" words, from which is systematically excluded all that rhythmical power of utterance without which human speech loses its savour, and becomes a mockery? But this was the very genius of the revolution. It melted down the combined energies of music and language into that mechanical mould-that symmetrical recurrence of arbitrary musical phrases, in which the notes come over and over again with all the soothing influence of mesmerism-in obedience to tonal laws, but in stern disobedience to the verbal sense.

But what has this church music to do with our church music? If this measure of Gregory involved such a revolution—if it really made this most portentous sacrifice, of expression to symmetry and of sense to sound, has the error been reversed, or consummated in the church music of succeeding ages? This is the main question for us; and this question we have now to answer.

It is, indeed, a very marvellous and a very mournful thing to cast even a rapid glance on the history of church music. We are not without sufficient details; yet I know no writer who seems, properly speaking, to have looked it through. This brief state

* Burney's History of Music, vol. ii. p. 168.

ment of the distinction between the Ambrosian and Gregorian chants will be found to throw an instructive light through all succeeding times to our own day.

For some five centuries after the change we speak of, the Gregorian chant constituted the absolute form of all liturgical music throughout the West. Counterpoint, or the art of putting note to note, according to certain conventional but not always consistent so-called laws of harmony, had been wholly unknown, we are assured, to Greek or Jew, and was the work of a monk named Guido in the year 1022. This memorable act, from which all modern music takes so much of its essential character, did not invalidate, but emphatically confirmed, the revolution of Pope Gregory; since it added to the mechanism of form what we might almost call the mechanism of colour. That inexpressive symmetrical march, and those arbitrary meaningless terminations, received here the yet more fatal power of sinking the sense in the measured sound. The semi-barbarous clang of the crude but pungent concords served, like the howl of Tippoo Sultan's instrument in our East India House, to drown the cries of the expiring words. By degrees the dislocation became a harmony, as it had always called itself a religion; and men were charmed by an artistic outrage on common language and common sense, in which the most awful words were swung hither and thither, without the most distant conceivable approach to their meaning, but with a certain acoustical solemnity, taken by ignorance for something sacred. It is no wonder that so convenient a compromise of the religious element with the sensuous should have continued in the church of Rome, not only during the so-called dark ages, but to the obstinate darkness of the present day.

And it is to be borne in mind, that when, by slow degrees, church musicians brought forward that more complex system of composition called Motett and Canon-from which our own classical music derived its pedigree, training, and, more or less, its instinctive principles-the old church chant of Pope Gregory, with the further-developed counterpoint of Guido, was every where the rudimental basis, and, most commonly, the actual subject.

Of that more complex style, I must give your uninitiated reader a more definite notion. The progress it underwent was slow, laborious, and irregular; but all proceeded on the fundamental principle, on which I must request that an attentive eye and heart may be fixed as we go on, the principle, I mean, of a methodical, scientific process, instead of the expression of an impulsive feeling. Dr. Burney has remarked, as though it were something inexplicable, that "in music, different from all other arts, learning and labour seem to have preceded taste and invention."* He speaks, of course, of what we now understand by music; for, of all

*Hist. vol. ii. p. 479.