the parts of first and second tenor sustained, here and there by others, together with the by the composer and Neils. W. Gade of quiet life of Germany, have conspired to keep rising orchestral celebrity. We may be organ music at a very high state of cultivasure that the violas on this occasion were tion, and we take this pursuit, which is often not the least listened to, and it will be a new gratification to the admirers of the genial Mendelssohn to know that he can become the heart of the social musical circle in this humble capacity. prosecuted with great ardour in comparative solitude, to realize as much of Arcadian simplicity and enjoyment as musical life is capable of affording. We have followed, with great pleasure, Hesse to Paris, whither he was invited to display the effects of a new organ erected in the church of St. Eustache, and to introduce the German style of organ playing, as exhibited in the execution of Bach's fugues and Toccatas. We can ima with its splendid examples of the obligato pedal, must have burst upon the French artists, who, though not destitute of talent of a certain order, were wholly so of mechanism, playing to their extemporary compositions nothing but pizzicato basses, and that only with one foot, while the other rested very conveniently on a ledge made, as it seemed, for that purpose. Notwithstanding this backwardness in the management of their organ, the musicians at St. Eustache understood and relished good music: the motets of Palestrina were the order of the day among them, and from the appreciation of so severe a gentle gradation. Let us hope that Hesse has established a school of execution which will shortly find as many disciples in Paris as it has already obtained among the rising musicians of London. It is pleasant to observe among the musicians of the actual epoch, some who bear the names of certain great organists formed in the school of Sebastian Bach, viz.: Krebs, Kittl, &c. These are, doubtless, the descendants of composers, in whom, after ly-gine the surprise with which this fine music, ing dormant for a generation or two, the spirit of music is again awakened. We are thankful even for a name that revives associations with great masters or solemn styles of music, and we could not see among the able organists of Berlin that of Thiele without remembering that such a name is connected historically with the formation of Handel's individual and majestic style on the organ. Meantime new names have sprung up allied to deeds of fame in composition and practical skill worthy to forestall antiquity. Adolph Hesse, organist of the cathedral of Breslau, is one of this class. He has written the most excellent organ music, besides a style to that of Bach's organ music, is but six symphonies for the orchestra, that are exceedingly well received among new compositions of that kind; while his playing discovers a noble style, and a mechanism so neat, smooth, and distinct, that Spohr, mentioning him with admiration, once exclaim- The lyric drama of Germany seems rather ed 'He makes the pedals sing.' The musi- to be distinguished by the abundance of its cal traveller who visits the cathedral cities modern repertory than by the quality or inof Germany, finds the imposing effect of the trinsic merit of individual specimens. New spacious and venerable Dom Kirche greatly operas are almost as complete a necessity of enhanced in most cases by the size, magni- German life as of Italian, and what the ficence, and architectural symmetry of its workmanship of native talent fails to supply enormous organs, an edifice itself, and not in this respect is made up by translations an unimpressive one even in its silence, and adaptations from the French and Italian adorned as it is by sumptuous wood-carvings, stage. In observing the crowd of musicians by figures of jubilant angels with uplifted who think themselves qualified to exercise trumpets, and every symbol of sacred harmo- the vocation of dramatic composers, we are ny and solemn adoration. The liberality little surprised at the ephemeral character which furnished these fine instruments is which prevails in their productions. For like the whole plan of Gothic ornament and the truth is, that opera music has ceased to architecture, one of the magnificent mysteries fulfil any higher object than that of pastime, of the past. Such an organ as we have de- and being thus degraded from its original scribed, of an immense semicircular front standard as the interpreter of sentiment and covering the whole breadth of the choir, and situation, which the art of the musician disrising to its greatest height at the wings, an- played and contrasted with the happiest regel crowned, stands in the cathedral of which sources of his genius, it calls no longer for Hesse is the principal organist. This, with any remarkable individuality of nature, but its noble pedal pipes, and endless stock of may be indifferently the work of any one combinations, might well pique the skill and who has a technical acquaintance with the invention of the artist, who, in this particular orchestra, and is versed in the routine of instance, has become the first performer of combination and effect. The bulk of this his country; but similar advantages enjoyed work is of imitative origin, therefore artifi in a season. cial, and incapable of rooting itself in the, gerial indignity the music lives, while the mind or affections. Wagner, who is at the grand opera of the day becomes antiquated head of the German opera at Dresden, was shortly one of the favourites of expectation, There are some things about Wagner that through his lyrical treatment of Captain render it doubtful how far he will fulfil exMarryatt's popular tale, 'The Flying Dutch- pectation, or satisfy that immense anxiety man; but in his new five-act opera, Ri-to catch a composer in which modern Euenzi,' he has not soared so triumphantly, rope, and Germany especially, pays a tribute having, as some think, in that lengthy exhi- to the past. In the place once held by C. bition of scenic pageantry and display, sunk M. von Weber, whose industry and taste down into the confirmed imitator of Meyer- first raised the German opera of Dresden beer. It in this opera, we believe, that a into importance, he has not evinced the due chorus is sung by men on horseback, a new love for, or study of the musical classics, choral medium for the expression of heroic which is naturally expected from a young sentiment, and a sure card for applause. composer. The connoisseurs were lately The public like to be addressed from the surprised to hear Mozart's chef-d'œuvre, ' Don back of an animal, and Liston, we remem- Giovanni,' conducted by him in a manner ber, used to mount an ass for the occasion, that defied all tradition as to the time of the in doing which, however, he consulted the movements. This argues as ill for native effect rather than the dignity of his appear- feeling as for study, and when we examine ance; and in much the same way the eques- the fruits of Wagner's genius, we find that, trian opera writers balance between novelty like Meyerbeer's, they are choral from first to and propriety. How gladly however would last. We possess, however, already but too the admirer of the lyric drama exchange all much of this, and require fine melodious airs the effect, the glare and glitter of the modern to restore the opera. Another dramatic comheroic opera of the Meyerbeer school, with poser who affects the comic style, Albert its processions, costumes, and pompous array Lortzing, appears to have struck out a path of the chivalry of the middle ages, for some that promises more originality and entertainscenes touched with human interest and ment. Both these composers unite in one with nature, which in the truest poetry or particular which is important to the music of romance still most delightfully come home the theatre-they are both the authors of the to the bosoms and business of men! Such libretti of their operas, and can thus the betare the true materials for music, and of ter consult the effect of movements from colsuch, without going far back for examples of location and contrast. them, were the dramas which Weber com- There is little encouragement in the preposed-music that lives in the heart and the sent state of Catholic Church government imagination, and which, when it has tempo- to attempt to supply new orchestral comrarily ceased to be heard at the theatre, has positions for the service,-masses, motets, a new existence on the pianoforte of the &c., of which so many admirable speciamateur. But for the big bulks of operas, mens have been furnished within these few now spun out to five acts, we may see by years by Hummel and Cherubini. Indeed it their inelastic nature how destitute they are seems doubtful at present whether orchestras of soul and spirit, the cessation of their term will not be entirely forbidden to assist in the being for them complete oblivion, a death offices of the Catholic Church, a movement from which there is no resurrection. It is to that effect having taken place in Flanders, plain, therefore, that imagination and feeling the especial domain of popery; but still, must animate the mass in the opera as well under orders, so imperfect in authority, and as the poem destined to last-and that the so partially influential, that the musicians theatre, supplied as it is with flashy and ar- driven from one church have found refuge tificial resources, cannot by a general contri- and countenance in another. It is not a very bution of her artists in the least supersede easy or a very safe matter to attempt innothe labours of real genius-that faculty which vations where pleasure has, for a series of informs, pervades and influences the whole; years, gone hand in hand with duty; and and which, instead of borrowing any aid the restoration of the austere plain chant of from scenery or costume, lends it. There the Gregorian era, endangers heresy in those is scarcely a theatrical barn so poor as to be who are accustomed to the benignity and unable to muster costumes for the classical graciousness of religion according to the opera, and the fine music of Don Juan,' and beautiful versions of it given in Mozart's and the Freischutz' has often been given, we Haydn's masses. We know of no more fear, to lighten the labours of those import-portentous thing than the sounds of a Greant performers in ballet and pantomime-the gorian canto fermo delivered in a requiem or scene-shifters. But in spite of this mana- other solemnity from the thick throats of a number of hale priests, who seem as if they had learned music of bulls, bass-horns, and ophicleides; the effect of their unison on the nerves of a sensitive stranger is tremendous, it fills the imagination with gloom and horror. But the impression of this atrabilarious music is weakened by habit, and though one must here recognize a powerful engine if occasionally employed, or in the hands of a good composer, yet nature resists continual denunciations, and vindicates a pleasantness as her constant mode of life even in religion. Curiously enough it happens that while the Catholics are identifying their service with this severe, unisonous chant, the Puseyites are endeavouring to introduce the same into the reformed Anglican church; by which we may see that the Gregorian canto fermo is a powerful lever in religion, and of admirable utility as a first step in the assimilation of creeds. This innovation will, however, certainly meet with resistance in Germany, particularly at Dresden, Munich, and Vienna, where there are fine orchestras which have tended much to incorporate music with divine service in those places, and to render one hardly distinguishable from the other. This is, perhaps, as it should be; ancient doctors having discovered, in the elements of harmony, the symbols of the Trinity. At all events, whatever disagreements may exist among the hierarchy as to the proper style of church music, the mass, according to the form which its music has assumed in the hands of Haydn and Mozart, possesses devotees who will support it independent of churches and the opinion of zealots. This they do purely out of musical enthusiasm: the mass exhibits such admirable varieties of treatment, admits such pathos, elegance, choral grandeur, and beauty of instrumentation, that it stands out, like the symphony, a test of very peculiar talents in the art of composition appreciable by secular ears as well as those of the orthodox. Thus Reissiger employs himself with much zeal in extracting new effects from the fine choir and orchestra of the church of Our Lady at Dresden; and others, without his advantages, are tempted to the same kind of employment through the premiums offered by private societies, and their own natural inclination to the task. The protection of church music by persons totally unconnected with the church, is a peculiar characteristic of this age-it is a thing of passion and sentiment like the Gothic arch, or storied window, those mute chroniclers of faded chivalry and romance-and the feeling abounds alike in Germany and in England. Perhaps no more memorable instance of it was ever given, than when, a year or two ago in London, some of the first musicians and amateurs met together to perform 'Tallis's Litany' after a dinner at a tavern. The enthusiasm of publication, whether of Catholic or Protestant music (for in this distinctions of creed are unknown), keeps pace with that of performance. Whatever excellence the past has, which may be conducive to modern delight or advancement, finds its way into public. Among the novelties of old music, that the musician will view with delight in the immortality of print, are a number of the manuscript cantatas of Sebastian Bach, of which one hundred and thirty-four were collected at Berlin about the commencement of the present year. We shall now see this great composer-incontestably, as facts have proved, the most voluminous musical author that ever livedplaced by the side of Handel in vocal composition. It were presumption to anticipate a futurity of thirty years as to the probably then existing opinion upon these great composers; but the march of time and opinion, at present, is strongly in favour of Bach, a man whose style necessarily awaited an age of cultivation for due homage. This Albert Durer of music seems to have anticipated all the grace and charm of modern melody, without having made further acquaintance with the Italian models of his day than might be found in an occasional journey to hear Hasse's operas at Dresden. The cadences and harmonies of Mozart and Beethoven abound in his works, as they do also in the works of the great Henry Purcell; while Handel, who had travelled in Italy, has decidedly a more antiquated air. We had designed to speak of the societies for part singing in Germany-half festive, half musical, but our space is exhausted. The glee or four part song for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, is now sometimes produced; but when will Germany realize the exquisite performance of the Vaughans, Harrisons, and Bartlemans? For such a performance we must not leave Englandstill rich as it is in the finest traditions of concerted song. ART. IX.-Portraits of the Game and Wild, derness, at the moment that the dawn is Animals of Southern Africa, delineated busily unfolding all its varied features. From from Life in their Native Haunts during every tree the heavy dew-drops pour like a hunting Expedition from the Cape Colo- rain: streams of white mist, smooth and ny as far as the Tropic of Capricorn, in glassy as a tranquil river, float slowly down 1836 and 1837, with Sketches of the Field the valleys, reflecting from their surface the Sports, by Major Sir WILLIAM CORNWAL-trees, and cliffs, and crags on either hand. LIS HARRIS, drawn on Stone by FRANK HOWARD. London: Pelham Richardson. 1844. Here, through openings between feathery mimosas, weeping willows, and tall trembling reeds, we catch a glimpse of some quiet lake, the haunt of the hippopotamus; while No man can have set his foot upon the wilds a herd of graceful, purple antelopes are seen of Africa, without feeling himself to be in a drinking on its further margin. There, country totally different from all others. This amidst thick clumps of camel-thorn, we beis the case throughout every part of the vast hold a drove of giraffes with heads eighteen continent, but more especially in that south-feet high, browsing on the top of trees. ern horn which formed the scene of Sir Elsewhere the rhinoceros pokes forth his Cornwallis Harris's sporting excursions. It long ugly snout from a brake. While the consists of a most strange assemblage of lion, fearless in the consciousness of his own mountains and plains, of spots lovely and strength, parades his tawny bulk over the picturesque beyond description, and gifted plain, or reclines in sphinx-like attitude bewith inexhaustible fertility, and of seeming-neath some ancient tree. ly boundless plains where barrenness reigns Of the rich garniture of plants and flowso completely paramount, that the very prin- ers, which adorn several portions of this diciple of vegetation appears to be extinct. vision of Africa, Sir Cornwallis Harris speaks At a certain distance from the colony, we en- in terms of eloquent admiration. ter upon regions over which the most delightful clouds of ignorance-almost the only "At every step we take," says he, "what clouds one meets with still brood. We thousands and tens of thousands of gay flowers traverse large rivers, which rise no one rear their lovely heads around us. Of a surety knows where, and envelope their exits in the enthusiasm of the botanist has not painted the wonders of these regions in colours more equal obscurity. Ranges of mountains, also, brilliant than they deserve; for Africa is the with appellations uncouth, and hiding God mother of the most magnificent exotics that knows what treasures of the animal and grace the green-houses of Europe. Turn where vegetable kingdoms in their unvisited reces- we will, some new plant discovers itself to the ses, sweep before us along the verge of the admiring gaze, and every barren rock being dehorizon, dim, blue, and shadowy, like so corated with some large and showy blossom, it many fragments of fairy land. And if the can be no exaggeration to compare the country to a botanical garden left in a state of nature. great outlines of the landscape be original The regal Protea, for whose beauties we have and bold, the filling up and colouring are no from childhood entertained an almost instinctive less so. Everything upon which the eye respect, here blossoms spontaneously on every rests, has the appearance of having been side, the buzzing host of bees, beetles, and other cast in a mould, nowhere else made use of parasites by which its choice sweets are surin the system of nature. Among the terrounded, being often joined by the tiny hummingrestrial animals what bulk and fantastic bird, herself scarcely larger than a butterfly, formation! How numerous and strikingly darts her tubular tongue into the chalice. But who perches on the edge of a broad flower, and contrasted are the groups that present them- the bulbous plants must be considered to form selves! In their character and habits what the most characteristic class and in no region extremes appear to meet ! How unspeaka- of the globe are they to be found so numerous, bly lavish seems to be the waste of vitality! so varied, or so beautiful. To the brilliant and Yet who will dare to say, that in this prodi-sweet-smelling Ixia, and to the superb species of the Iris, there is no end; the morell, the corngious outpouring of animal life, there is a flag, the amaryllis, the hamanthus, and pancrasingle creature that does not enjoy and adorn tium, being countless as the sands upon the seathe scene on which it moves? If there be shore. After the autumnal rains their gaudy anything we should be disposed to think out flowers, mixed with those of the brilliant orchide, of place, it is the stunted representatives of impart life and beauty, for a brief season, to the humanity, which, under the name of Bush- most sandy wastes, and covering alike the meamen, roam in indescribable misery and de-dows and the foot of the mountains, are succeedgradation over those sublime savannahs. To ed by the gnaphalium, the xeranthemum, and a man of imagination, nothing more inspiring red, blue, or silky white flowers among a host of a whole train of everlastings, which display their can be conceived than climbing one of the scented geraniums, flourishing like so many breezy peaks overlooking that strange wil-weeds. Even in the midst of stony deserts lakes and streams, bend down their drooping arms towards the water, is if enamoured of their reflected images. Elsewhere we are placed upon the surface of the wild Karroo, almost scorched to a cinder by the heat. Even here, however, the rich play of light invests the scene with something like beauty. A variety of colours is sprinkled over the waste. Thin filmy vapours, impregnated arise a variety of aloes and other fleshy plants-, sites, stretch over the green sward a canopy the stapelia, or carrion-flower, with square, suc- impenetrable by the rays of the fiercest sun; culous, leafless stems, and flowers resembling while others, again, rising on the margins of star-fish, forming a numerous and highly eccentric genus, in odour so nearly allied to putrescent animal matter, that insects are induced to deposit their larvæ therein. The brilliant mesanbryanthemum, or fig marigold, comprising another genus almost peculiar to South Africa, extends to nearly three hundred species, and while they possess a magazine of juices, which enables them to bear without shrinking a long privation of moisture, their roots are admirably calculated to fix the loose shifting sands which form the superficies of so large a portion of the soil. But with silver or azure rays, expand like a amid this gay and motley assemblage, the heaths, whether in number or in beauty, stand confessedly unrivalled. Nature has extended that elegant shrub to almost every soil and situation-the marsh, the river brink, the richest loam, and the barest mural cliff, being alike 66 'Empurpled with the heather's dye.' Upwards of three hundred and fifty distinct species exist, nor is the form of their flowers less shaped, globular, and bell-shaped, some exhibit Cup the figure of a cone, others that of a cylinder; some are contracted at the base, others in the middle, and still more are bulged out like the mouth of a trumpet. Whilst many are smooth and glossy, some are covered with down, and others, again, are encrusted with mucilage. Red in every variety and depth of shade, from blush to the brightest crimson, is their prevailing complexion; but green, yellow, and purple are scarcely less abundant, and blue is almost the only co diversified than are their varied hues. lour whose absence can be remarked. "In emerald tufts, flowers purple, pink and white, mantle over the eminences and fill up the far background with uncertain forms. Beheld in wildernesses such as these, even the strangest animals appear at home. We are not surprised to view the quagga, or the gnoo, the giraffe, the oryx, or the black antelope, occupying the foreground of landscapes so singular. Africa has always enjoyed the reputation of being the mother of monsters; and if we group together in imagination the wallis Harris's Portraits of Game and Wild fantastic creatures portrayed in Sir CornAnimals,' couple together the tall and brilliantly painted camel-leopard with the lumbering hippopotamus, resembling a huge cylinder of fat, supported awkwardly on stumps, and the ungainly rhinoceros, looking, in his who has got into a coat a world too wide for corrugated skin, like a shrivelled hodman him; if we place the slender leopard, agile, springy, light, and flexible as an eel, beside the cumbrous bulk of the elephant, striding along the plain, which seems to shake beneath him; if we set side by side the cerulean antelope and the lion, the springbok and the wild boar, the sassabe and the gnoo, the zebra and the eland, the minute humming bird and the gigantic ostrich-if we do this, we say, and compare the proportion and structure of the various animals, we shall probably conclude, that poetry has seldom fabled anything more unlike our ordinary notions of reality than what nature has actually produced on the further extreme of the African continent. Such is the scene over which the sportsman pursues his game over South Africa. Of the animals hunted we can say but little. Sir Cornwallis Harris has described them with the most graphic beauty, and added to his descriptions large lithographic portraits, which, for truth of delineation and delicacy of colouring, have never been surpassed. Nor is this all. Each animal is represented in a landscape resembling that in which he That a sportsman like Sir Cornwallis is found in nature and as the features which Harris should enjoy a journey through such extra-tropical Africa puts on in the southern a region may easily be conceived; but the hemisphere are peculiarly strange and mag- relentless hostility with which he pursued nificent, every illustration may be regarded his quarry, is scarcely to be accounted for as a rich pastoral piece. Where vegetation on the same principles. He appears to have abounds we have trees, and plants, and flow- declared perpetual war against the whole ers, all of peculiar shapes and hues; some four-footed race, and never to be happy but standing detached, and appearing like a suc- when engaged in thinning their numbers. cession of leafy platforms, smoothed and level- His horse and his rifle are part of himself; led, to be the scene of the midnight gambols of he lives on powder and two-ounce balls. fairies, high in air-others, gnarled and tor- He stalks abroad in the morning, and death tuous, meeting and interlacing above, and follows his footsteps. No sooner is the supporting, besides, a lavish profusion of para-sun above the horizon, than the fatal rifle |