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 ¬it is soft and voluptuous, expressive, beyond description, of the passions, and the language of the people most happily accords with it. In other countries, where the inhabitants are more robust and intellectual, their music is corre- spondent, being animated and intensely vigo- rous, lifting the mind to Heaven when devotion is to be impressed, rousing it to battle when martial ardour is to be excited, and electrifying the whole frame of man by the endless measures of harmonious combination. Armata herself, though at the head of her world, was here, perhaps, not pre-eminent, but her wealth and her commanding station collected in her capital all vocal and instrumental talents, leaving other countries, comparatively, without chord or voice. ¬Being totally illiterate in music, though charmed by it even to rapture, I can say no more of it than that I sometimes imagined Handel himself to have been at the organ, with the Messiah spread out before him ; and some- times ¬