sition to expect it—is prepared for it by being made first to feel the Infinite within itself,-by being put in sympathy with the oppressed, and led with them to make the appeal from the natural to the supernatural, in obedience to that sense of justice and of order which relates us with both worlds. This chorus is the solemn portal by which HANDEL introduces us believingly into the realm of wonders. No. 3. Recitative, tells of Moses and Aaron showing signs, and turning their waters into blood; which is followed by the remarkable single chorus in G minor, They loathed to drink, whose fugal subject, passed from voice to voice, and multiplied through all the forms of chromatic counterpoint, sickens expressively through the continually-echoed interval of the "extreme flat seventh." But from this imagination of disgust we are soon humorously relieved by one of those pleasant freaks of HANDEL'S happy fancy. Presto! what frolic, grotesque hops and jumps between the figures of the violins! There is no mistaking the subject of the air (mezzo-soprano) which follows this droll prelude: Their land brought forth frogs; yea, even in their king's chambers: how the voice prolongs and plays upon the first syllable of that word chambers! The strain grows more sober at the thought of the cattle given over to the pestilence; but the frogs hop back in the accompaniment, and wind up with a merry ritornel. This hop-skip-and-jump song fitly precedes the double chorus, No. 6, which is in the same vein, and happily suggests the universallypervading presence of the small plague which it describes. He spake the word, is uttered in strong unison of the male voices; and there came all manner of flies, answer the silvery sopranos and altos, with their light and airy harmony; and the whole air swarms and shivers with the fine demi-semi-quavers of the violins. The fiat and the image are several times repeated, now alternately, and now in simultaneous distribution among the various voices. The heat of the movement increases, till, at last, the orchestral basses are stirred up from their depths, and roll along, like the roar of a fire across a prairie, to express the all-devouring plague of locusts. Here is a success which one would have pronounced impossible in music. Another composer could not have handled such a conception with any hope of not coming off flatly ridiculous; but the Handelian health and vigour could riot in the full humour of the thought, and dare to paint the images so literally, without violating the dignity of Art. It has been well suggested that HAYDN doubtless "had been a close observer of this and other descriptive figures of HANDEL; and it is very probable that he caught the idea of the sporting of the leviathan, the crawl of the worm, the bounding of the stag, the tread of the heavy beast, and other passages of dangerous precedent, from his great predecessor." No. 7. Now the creative energy of our composer is thoroughly roused; his resources are no more exhausted by this last effort, than are the vials of the heavenly wrath. Look out for worse than locusts now; a pure elemental tempest, a wholly awful and sublime type of destroying force. The orchestra arrests attention to the hush before a storm, with now and then a big raindrop, then pattering notes that increase thicker and thicker, till out bursts the famous “Hailstone Chorus." How simple, but terrifically graphic in its movement! Fire, mingled with the hail, ran along upon the ground! There is nothing intricate in its construction, the vocal masses are soon possessed by its crackling momentum, and it almost "runs along" of itself. No. 8. As opposite from the last as possible, is the next chorus: He sent a thick darkness. The dull, groping, chromatic harmony, with which the instruments prepare the thought, is as far from commonplace as the most modern undulations of SPOHR or MENDELSSOHN, and almost makes you shudder. Voice after voice, uttering separately little fragments of the sentence, in recitative style, make the bewilderment appalling; and how palpable that darkness, when the instruments at last drop away, and in distinct unison the bass voices pronounce: which might be FELT! Next follow two choruses so strongly and happily contrasted, as to be complements to one another. No. 9 is a double fugue, or fugue with two subjects: He smote all the first-born of Egypt. From the first orchestral chord, it smites with a terrible emphasis; and the voice-parts writhe and struggle in their tough and angry embrace, like the splinters of an oak twisted by lightning; after a while they drop the fugue form and all smite together with the instruments; but the movement passes off in a spiral whirlwind (strongest natural type of force) as it came on. This is in the key of A minor; and the minor mood, if it is usually soft and tearful, yet admits of more modulations of a hard expression than the major. Pleasant as our bland Indian summer after pinching November blasts is the blithe, smooth, pastoral style of chorus No. 10: But as for His people, He led them forth like sheep. It is a cheerful Andante in G. The first clause is given with a degree of bold exultation; the second, He led them, is sung in soft, smooth, flowing cadence, sustaining the last note through several bars, first by the altos, then by the sopranos, and so on-a serene and lovely picture; the third clause: He brought them out with silver and gold, is one of those clear and simple fugues, which the mind easily follows by the sense of hearing, without the aid of the eye to trace out its intricacies upon paper; and was not strong HANDEL in his glory, when he brought all the voices together upon the words: There was not one feeble person among their tribes? What a feeling of strength and unanimity there is in it! "NOT ONE, NOT ONE" Sounds like the ring of grounded arms along a vast line of infantry: from end to end of the whole line we are one, we are all here! No. 10. Chorus: Egypt was glad when they departed, is a fugue in A minor, though the strange intervals and modulations make you doubt the key continually. The whole has, it must be confessed, a dreary and ambiguous expression. It closes with the words, fear fell upon them, by a half cadence, on the dominant instead of the keynote, leaving a painfully-unfinished, unresolved feeling. Perhaps, as the writer before cited suggests, HANDEL meant this chorus to describe "the doubtful or equivocal willingness or gladness of Egypt for Israel's departure." No. 12. Here, as in frequent later instances, the full force of a double chorus is employed on a brief sentence of narrative, or introductory text, instead of a Recitative for a single voice. In long Grave measure, fortissimo, in the natural key, the voices all pronounce: He rebuked the Red Sea; then all is silent, and in a whisper, resolving into the harmony of E flat, they all add: and it was dried up. Once more the rebuke is given fortissimo, in the last key, and the whispered effect ends in G minor. Brief, bold, impressive as a thunder-clap echoed on the mountains! The contrast of keys adds much to the startling effect. What follows (No. 13) is worthy of the imposing announcement. It is another of those great musical miracles, with a miracle for its subject, the descriptive double chorus: He led them through the deep, as through a wilderness. It is one of the most difficult and complicated choruses in its structure, full of fragments of melody or roulades, running in all directions, yet all tending so sensibly to one end, that the effect of the whole is easily intelligible to one who cannot analyze it. He led them through the deep: forms the first musical theme, which is a stately, firm ascent (of bass voices and instruments in unison) from the keynote as high as the fourth, then dropping on the word deep to the fifth below, to commence the ascent anew from that "deeper deep," and rise again to the same height. It is in quadruple measure, a quarter note to each syllable. As the tenor voices take up the same stately movement, the violins lead off the second theme in scattering streamlets of semi-quaver runs and roulades, like the "mingling of many waters;" and bits of these the several voice-parts catch and imitate upon: as through a wilderness. A very wilderness indeed, and yet a most harmonious one, of melody! for all the while the steady, stately, ponderous ascent of the first theme: He led them through, heard in some part, gives uniformity and providential, sure direction to the multitudinous and seemingly bewildering move ment. No. 14. How opposite the next! In ponderous octaves the double-basses of the orchestra begin to heave and roll in unwearied triplets (key of C minor); the other instruments adding all their strength to the terrible narrative of the voices, which they chant in plain syllabic counterpoint: But the waters overwhelmed their enemies! The relentless billows roll and rage with unabated fury to the end, while the voices again and again, in breathless awe and wonder, simply tell the terrible fact, without comment, that there is not one, no, not ONE of them left. The surging sea of harmony swallows up all other thoughts, even of the most careless listener, as the Red Sea swallowed up the hosts of Pharaoh. And HANDEL was the MOSES who "stretched forth his hand, that the waters might come." Nos. 15 and 16. Another of those short double chorus sentences: and Israel saw that great work, that the Lord did upon the Egyptians; and the people feared the Lord; and the very solemn, antique, church-like harmony, in long equal notes, of the chorus: and believed the Lord and His servant Moses, close the miraculous display and the first part of the oratorio. In the severe absence of rhythmic variety, this chorus charms by its wonderful wealth of harmony. Its religious and profound composure, monotonous as it might seem to many, is singularly welcome to the soul of the true listener, after the faculties have been so long kept on the stretch by this astounding accumula tion of chorus upon chorus (like "Ossa upon Pelion'), each a vivid tone-translation, palpable to one of our senses, of an outward miracle. Here then let us rest awhile, and take advantage of a short interval between the parts, to think over what has passed before us. Each present moment of those thick-coming wonders was so all-absorbing, that thought had no liberty of looking back or forward. We only felt the past and coming in the present; felt the unity and natural development throughout; felt, what it is the property of all high Art, like every heavenly inspiration, to make us feel, namely, that kind of consciousness above time, to which "a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as one day." Think, in the first place, of the bold, unprecedented, and gigantic plan, which could have entered no other head then HANDEL'S to conceive, still less to execute, for the musical illustration of so immense a subject. The music of the first part has been nearly all descriptive; and the objects described, miracles, with their accompanying emotions. Later composers, since the great development of orchestral resources, have given us admirable specimens of descriptive instrumental music, like the "Pastoral Symphony," the accompaniments to the " Creation," the overture to "William Tell," &c. But HANDEL paints us his stupendous pictures mainly through the instrumentality of a vast choral multitude of voices, eking out the effect with only such secondary suggestions as he could draw from the meagre (to borrow a term from painting) almost monochromatic orchestras of his time. He wields the vocal masses to humanise and spiritualise and lift above all sense of mere physical jugglery, those old Mosaic wonders, which it is dangerous for human faculties to attempt to realize too vividly, lest in so doing we degrade them. Think, too, of the extreme literalness and minuteness with which he fears not to take up and treat mean, ludicrous, or repulsive images and sensations. Clad in thick proof of sound health and humour, he takes us safely through all this. He so blends the piquant individuality of his small creatures, with the all-pervadingness of the plague, so tempers the actual with the ideal, as fairly to conciliate, and more than conciliate, our imagination. In a word, he succeeds where another would have been a fool for his pains. He is HANDEL still, the sublime artist, though he have the homeliest sitters. Frogs and lice and commonplace predicaments cannot reduce him into even momentary equality with commonplace men. It is also worthy of remark, how the character of the music rises with the gradation of the plagues. Putrid water, frogs, and flies, and lice, devouring locusts, "fire mingled with the hail,” darkness" which might be felt," death, and the overwhelming flood:-here is a regular ascent from plagues literal and mean, and shaming and annoying, to higher and higher types of doom, more spiritual, and elemental, and sublimely terrible. And HANDEL understood and reproduced it. When men violate the truth and morality of nature, the first reaction or penalty comes in forms that irritate, disgust, and shame us; moral corruption feels its own natural consequences, and sees its own material image in these same little animated forms of uncleanness. As the sin goes on deepening, darkness comes, and death and elemental chaos; colossal shadows, and the blasts and lightnings, and abysses of impersonal, relentless, elemental fury smite the soul with spiritual awe, the terrors of the Infinite. We know not what "interior" or "second sense" the great interpreter by correspondence, the seer SWEDENBORG, found in the order of the plagues of Egypt; but we doubt if he could state the spiritual side and moral of the matter, more completely than HANDEL renders it, in the emotional language of this great choral music, at the same time that he keeps so close to the material image. | C. It is like feeling every chord successively of the great harp of humanity, to satisfy himself that each is sound and true, and ready in its turn to yield response worthy of the great occasion. Then with the instruments the voices with their full strength and volume burst forth: Moses and the children of Israel sang this song unto the Lord, traversing essentially the same circle of harmonies from the same point of departure. Upon this noble prelude follows the stupendous fugued double chorus: I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. But as this chorus is repeated at the close of the oratorio, we suspend till then our remarks upon it. In No. 19, we have for once the relief of a sweet soprano duet; for now the miraculous display is over, and sentiment may follow its own laws, sometimes absorbed with all hearts into the great choral act of praise, and sometimes "musing at its own sweet will" in individual melody. The Lord is my strength and my song: He is become my salvation: is the text, on which one voice commences musingly a minor strain, climbing through several short, liquid, rhythmical divisions, but soon, by a regular cadence on the In a tolerable performance, such as we are supposing ourselves and our readers to have just been hearing, even the least technically musical of us were plainly much impressed by the wholesome strength and grandeur of this first part of "Israel in Egypt." Some, perhaps, thought such a perpetually crescendo series of great choruses monotonous and stunning; the strain upon the mind and nerves was too seldom relieved by the gentler melody of song, quartette, or instrumental symphony. No one, however, can charge these choruses with lack of variety; they are an evershifting, wonderfully contrasted, wonderfully har-key-note, relapses into silence. Meanwhile the monious series of mountain scenery. It was the fault of the performers, perhaps, if we did not so feel them. Their boldness would have been at once relieved and heightened by more decided contrasts of loud and soft, on the part of choir and orchestra. It is very natural for such musicbeing in the fugue form, which is flame-like, wave-like-to work itself up into a very storm of harmony; but even storms have partial lulls; and there is no musical effect so soothing, satisfying, and sublime, as the pianissimo of a vast multitude of voices. But now for the Second Part. For, see, the singers have resumed their places, the players have retuned their instruments, and the conductor's baton is already raised. We may be sure that there are even greater things in store, for HANDEL grows as he goes on; his energy is never too soon spent; in doing so much for us, he has been opening deeper springs of inspiration in himself; we shall witness with what new force and fulness they gush forth. The subject-matter of the Second Part is the sublime Song of Miriam, contained in the fifteenth chapter of Exodus. To bring out and illustrate the full sentiment of this, by all the resources of his art and genius, seems to have been HANDEL'S aim. other voice has commenced a little later, and is finishing the same melodic fragment. Again they start, one after the other, as before, with the same little rhythmic motive, and this time carry it several stages higher; and before the second voice can finish its imitation, the first with three bright notes upon that highest height, plunges down into a bolder strain, full of exulting roulades ; and before the end, the voices riot in triplets, and in still finer and more curious divisions, with bird-like ingenuity warbling through all forms of melodic fioriture. The form is quaint, antique, full of the Handelian mannerism, and not much to the taste of this day; yet it has an intrinsic beauty that will live. Nos. 20-22 are another short introductory double chorus sentence: He is my God: the chorus in old ecclesiastical style: and I will exalt Him, in which two fugue subjects are regularly worked up; and the famous bass duet, known in concertrooms: The Lord is a man of war. This last is in the bold, declamatory, as well as elaborately ornate style, which HANDEL can employ with great effect, given the singer great enough to enter into the spirit of it, in spite of its not being modern. True Handelian singers and players who get at the life of his peculiarity, are rare in this day; and his turns and phrases seem a dull and antiquated mannerism, when not taken up with nerve and con amore. These songs, there made available in ordinary performances, seldom amount to more than accurate, but feeble and inanimate readings, to save the completeness of the oratorio. HANDEL has indulged in summe exuberance of accompaniment in this dust, contrasting the pastoral oboes and bassoons with the string instruments. And now hear, what a prelude! a sort of universal prelude; as if filled with the magnitude of the theme, and conscious that this heavenly pas-fore, in the hands of such solo-singers as can be sion of divine praise, which now craves expression, contained all the primal, unperverted passions of the human soul. The orchestra begins, and in as many bars tries, hurriedly but boldly, all the harmonies of one key after another, to the number of seven, a whole octave of distinct scales. Of course the starting-point is the centre of the whole musical system, the natural accord of C; The depths have covered them (No. 23) is a chris with a quick, spasmodic grasp, HANDEL'S strong beginning in the cheerful key of F, but modu hand (as it were) sweeps through the several lating into colder harmony at the thought they positions of this accord; in the next bar he tries sank, till at the close the basses heavily drg those of the chord of A; in the next, of D, and so through the intervals of the chord of A minor on, traversing the circle of varieties and returning down to the E below the lines upon the words into the noonday fulness and repose of unity into the bottom, like a stone. This very brief churas is followed by one more elaborate: Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power (No. 24), whose last clause: hath dashed in pieces the enemy, forms a strong fugal point. Double choruses still continue to rise, like mountain beyond mountain, in unabated majesty and novelty of form. The choral sentence: And in the greatness of thine excellency, thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee, seems to convey the idea of a power transcending all our united ideas of natural order, by the daring use of discords and their triumphant resolution. Of No. 26: Thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble, we need but name the subject, which HANDEL has of course wrought out at length in the fugue form, the correspondence whereof with the spiral movement of consuming flame is perfect. Indeed, to convey an idea of the fugue to those not musically initiated, we have often been obliged to liken it to flame. No. 27. And with the blast of thy nostrils, is a single chorus, wonderful in structure and expression. Miracle itself could not more hold one breathless, than that monotone passage of the basses in octaves, telling how "the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea." The separate clauses of the verse form four distinct and characteristic musical subjects, which continually cross and interweave. Passing over two elaborate songs (23 and 29), The enemy said, I will pursue, and, Thou didst blow with the wind, in which the words pursue and blow furnish a key respectively to the musical treatment;-passing, also, the double chorus, The earth swallowed them, and the duet, Thou in thy mercy hast led forth thy people (30-32), we come to one of the most sublimely descriptive choruses (No. 33), The people shall hear, and be afraid. The agitated movement of the accompaniment, modulating wildly from E minor, gives the shuddering image of fear, which is kept up in the breathless, fragmentary utterance of the voices. The inhabitants of Canaan, is pronounced firmly by all the voices; but, shall melt away, is given in little vanishing fragments of melody by one voicepart at a time. These are long kept up, and imitated from voice to voice. By the greatness of thy arm, is given in long notes of solid harmony; they shall be as still as a stone, sing the basses in heavy unison, suddenly dropping down an octave; as they lie there, fixed and deep and cold, the passing over of the Lord's people, group after group, begins, in little travelling phrases of melody, or short scale-passages, now in the major and now in the minor, ascending all the time in some two or more of the voice-parts. This is followed by a delicious, serene melody for a mezzo-soprano or contralto voice, in the warm, spring-like, happy key of E: Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established. It breathes the grateful repose of a sweet and pious home feeling. | panied by the stately, ponderous tread of a ground bass; then they are answered, in a full blaze of vocal harmony and instrumentation, twice. This is, as it should be, in the key of C. Then a brief recitative (No. 36): For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots, . . . but the children of Israel went on dry land, &c.: and then, again, the choral burthen of, THE LORD SHALL REIGN, which represents the highest moment of a universal act of worship, all thoughts, all feelings absorbed in the thought of the Eternal. Then another sentence of recitative (38), telling how Miriam, the prophetess, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances; and Miriam answered them. Finally, as if to raise expectation to the highest pitch, a single high soprano voice, with clear, silvery, clarion tones, delivers the first line of the great double chorus, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously! reaching the highest note, which it prolongs, bright and firm and clear, on the first syllable of gloriously. And again bursts out in full chorus, THE LORD SHALL REIGn for EVER AND EVER. The clarion voice of Miriam continues: The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea, with a triumphant trill upon the note above the key-note, which terminates the strain; and still again the choral outburst of, THE LORD SHALL REIGN! after which the altos give out the fugue subject, For he hath triumphed gloriously; its long, rolling cadence upon gloriously is thenceforth heard echoing about from one quarter to another of the vocal heavens, throughout the whole chorus; and, mingled with it, you hear short, spasmodic fragments:-"the horse," "and his rider," "hath he thrown," &c.; also, "a sober chanting kind of countersubject" (as Dr. Burney calls it) on the words, I will sing unto the Lord, swells and subsides continually amid the roar and tempest of triumphal harmony. Once this gently-swelling, joyfully-solemn chant becomes the leading theme, and draws responses from all parts of the choir,-a pure heaven of serenest rapture, just before all the subjects are again brought together for a full and final close in the perfect accord of C. This is by many esteemed HANDEL's greatest chorus. "The effects of this composition," says Dr. Burney, "are at once pleasing, grand, and sublime. Voices and instruments here have their full effect; and such is the excellence of this production, that, if HANDEL had composed no other piece, this alone would have rendered his name immortal among true lovers and judges of harmony." As a whole, "Israel in Egypt" is one of giant HANDEL'S mightiest works. We shall not say, in every sense, the mightiest. For colossal proportions, laid out as it is upon an immense scale; for bold conceptions, even exceeding the boldest of MICHAEL ANGELO in another art, and most triumphant execution; for power to keep the mind of the hearer strained up to its fullest comprehension of the sublime throughout so long a series; for musical learning and invention, and strong application of creative will: this oratorio is perhaps unrivalled by any other work of music, or of any other art that will admit comparison. We have now reached the sublime close of the whole. HANDEL'S strength has been steadily growing towards this climax. It consists of But we cannot agree for a moment with those several numbers. First, the sentence of plain who call it greater than "The Messiah." The and majestic double chorus: THE LORD SHALL books of Moses are sublime; but who will say REIGN FOR EVER AND EVER. The words are that Isaiah and the Gospels are not greater? first given in unison by altos and tenors, accom- "The Messiah" is as much a greater oratorio, as its theme is greater. It is the difference between Judaic and Christian; between the old dispensation of Power, and the new dispensation of Love; between the Old Bible love of Justice, and the New Testament justice of Love. The sublimity of "Israel in Egypt" is more material; that of the "Messiah" is more spiritual. One brings mighty miracles, as it were, palpably before us; the other utters the prophetic aspirations of the soul of all Humanity, and their fulfilment in Humanity's MESSIAH. This last, then, was the true predestined theme for HANDEL, for the culminating effort of his genius, up to which all his other oratorios, as well as his forty operas, and all before that, had been so deeply and broadly educating him. Necessarily, therefore, besides Hallelujah" choruses, that theme required deep songs of love and grief and faith. "The Mes siah" has more variety, and, as a work of Art, as well as of sentiment, more unity. It is a wonderful, organic whole, vitally connected every where. "Israel in Egypt" is grand in detail; a succession of astounding pictures or events, wonderful, because the strength of the composer flags not to the end, but seems ready to begin again and build as many more such choruses as you will find him texts. In "Israel in Egypt," HANDEL is a mighty miracle-worker, a colossal strong man; in the "Messiah," he is the loving, deep interpreter of the best instincts and aspirations of the human soul,—a prophet of Humanity made one with Man, with Nature, and with God. TWILIGHT THOUGHTS. BY J. H. BIXBY. "It is the hushed and holy twilight time, land? Then at first comes up one bright star. Were there no more, what a wonder and a beauty even one would be? Companion, at times, of the crescent moon, walking through the blue fields of heaven by her side, heightening and glorifying the kingdom of Night, should we not watch for its coming with reverent hearts, and almost worship its brightness? But now, from the Cynosure to the Southern Cross, a whole zodiac of immeasurable space is blazing with starry worlds. Soon through our horizon will they flash, bright as a new creation, upon us. Think, O man! WOULD I could picture in true and graphic | plumes her eagle wings for her flight to the better colours, that brief season of sad sweet thoughts— the evening twilight. If the long summer day has any period of happiness for my spirit-any moment of quiet joy to be treasured in the heart, then, as soft and refreshing as the dew, it descends upon me. Everything is so fraught with a subdued and spiritual loveliness, that one's every thought glows with pure and holy poetry, and the soul, forgetting the real, wanders on through the "radiant realm of the ideal," till spirit and being are imbued and absorbed in the beautiful visions floating down on the soft summer air! How strangely beautiful are the few brief moments when the sun has set, ere the stars begin to send, like gazing angels, their spiritglances to our hearts! "That hour once sacred to God's presence, still Sometimes we have a twilight when nor sun nor star appears, when no fleecy cloud or silvery moon floats in the realm of boundless space. May we not call it the type of unity and immensity; immensity that embraces and contains all things, and of unity that admits no opposite? And does not thus to the believer seem the presence of the Deity, an undivided and all-pervading essence, penetrating and lighting the depths of his inner life to the exclusion of all opposing qualities-the atmosphere of love and peace, in which his soul expands with freedom and delight, and Faith, refreshed and invigorated, "How vast his power, how glorious must He be Who has with stars, as though with diamond flowers, Think of thy insignificance, and yet again think. Who does not love the twilight hour? The busy cares of the day are over-all is hushed and peaceful, and there is but little to interrupt our meditative fancies. Happy they who can recall the events of the day, and meet no act they now wish undone-no word that were better unsaid— no thought or feeling indulged which it were wrong to cherish. Such twilight thoughts are followed by sweet and invigorating sleep-a dew of blessing and repose-giving the spirit, as the same season gives the flowers and the tender grass, a new life-a morning of freshness and fragrance, of purity and peace. So too, of Age, the evening twilight of the day of life. Its reflections and its repose depend upon the day which precedes it;-and may we all live for that better morning. |