In music of this kind, there is somewhat that is peculiar to the individuality of the composer; but there is more that is universal, true to the inmost meaning of all hearts. Every sentiment, if it is deep enough, becomes religion; for every sentiment seeks and tends to unity, to harmony, to recognition of the one in all. And every sentiment in music is expressed in its purity, and carried up as it were to the blending point of all the emotions in one, which is the radical desire and feeling of the soul, its passion to be one with God.
If Mozart is perhaps tHe deepest in this order of composition, he by no means stands alone. The church afforded to genius that sphere, for its highest and holiest ambition, which it found not elsewhere. The Masses of Hadyn are more numerous, and more of them elaborate, great efforts, than those of Mozart, many of whose Masses were composed at so early an age?; and his genius steadily drew him towards that sphere of music, in which he was destined to reign supreme,—the opera. But, though to Hadyn we must grant the very perfection of artistic skill and grace, a warm and childlike piety, and a spirit of the purest joy; and though at times he has surpassing tenderness; still there is an indescribable atmosphere, an air of inspiration, a gushing forth as of the very warmest, inmost life-blood, in Mozart's religious music, which affects us, even when it is simpler than Hadyn's, with more power. Religion takes in Hadyn more the form of gratitude and joy. The mournfulness of a Miserere or a Crucifixus of his is a passive mood, often but the successful contemplation or painter s study of such a mood, where the subject calls for it, rather than a permanent and inherent quality in the whole music of his own being. His ground tone seems to be a certain domestic grateful sense of life, in which the clearest order and the sweetest kindliness and thankfulness for ever reign. In Mozart the ground tone is love, the very ecstacy and celestial blias of the re-union of two souls long separated, at once romantic and Platonic, sensuous, and yet exalting the senses to a most spiritual ministry. In him we have what is nearest to the naked soul of music,—its most ethereal, transparent, thrilling body. One would scarce suppose, that the soul of Mozart ever
