which seems never finished, but becoming, growing, yearning and striving upwards, the beginning only of a boundless plan, whose consummation is in another world. We enjoy with Haydn the serene pleasure of doing things, the ever fresh surprise of accomplishment. With him we round off and finish one thing after another, and look upon it and pronounce it good; but we do not lift our eyes away and yearn for what is beyond. Constant, cheerful activity was the element of Haydn. Hence the Creation was the very subject for the man; his whole nature chose it for him. In "The Creation" the instrumental accompaniments are prominent, and the voices secondary. The orchestra weaves the picture; the voices but hint its meaning. Literal description of nature is carried even too far in it. Beautiful and surprising as those imitations are, of Chaos, and the birth of Light, and rolling ocean, and smooth meadows, and brooks, and birds, and breezes, monsters of the deep and of the forest, and insects sparkling like gold dust in the sunny air,—yet often they seem too mechanical and curious, and out of the province of Art, which should breathe the pervading spirit of Nature, as a whole, and not copy too carefully the things that are in it. Whoever has studied the Pastoral Symphony, or the Pastoral Sonata of Beethoven, will feel the difference between music which flows from an inward feeling of nature, from a common consciousness (as it were) with nature, and the music which only copies, from without, her single features. These pieces bring all summer sensations over you, but they do not let you identify a note or a passage as standing for a stream, or a bird. They do not say; look at this or that, now imagine nightingales, now thunder, now mountains, and now sunspots chasing shadows; but they make you feel as you would if you were lying on a grassy slope in a summer's afternoon, with the melancholy leisure of a shepherd swain, and these things all around you without your noticing them. Haydn paints you this or that by means of various qualities and combinations of tone, and various movements; with wonderful success he calls up images; you admire the ingenuity and the beauty, but are not inspired. We were glad to hear the opening symphony, representing chaos, performed by the orchestra so as to give us some dim conception of
