Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/112

 Then it seemed to me that I saw in a Pisgah Vision the Opera itself transformed; no longer the resort of a thoughtless aristocracy, assembled to listen to the vocal gymnastics of foreigners and Romanists, but a rallying point for all lovers of homely and innocent English Music. Why, I remembered, the oratorio itself developed from services held in an oratory or chapel in Rome; why should not the Service of Song, which has long been such an attraction in our churches, develop in its turn and become the great musical form of the English People; so that instead of the over-dressed and under-dressed (alas! that I must say it), who throng the opera-house to listen to exotic, un-English, and, I am afraid, unwholesome music, we might have great gatherings of sober, decent, earnest people, clad in their "go-to-meeting" clothes (to use a good old phrase), and rapt to tears and laughter by such masterpieces of the true musician's art as "Little Abe" and "The Oiled Feather."

And I went farther. At present, I said