shionable to decry his compositions as beneath the
notice of musical connoisseurs. Politics, it is said, came to mingle
in the controversy; and those who held by the king's Opera were as
certainly Tories, as those who went to the nobility's were Whigs. Of
course all this was very foolish, and very wrong; yet in our days of
stately conventionality, when perfect impassibility is deemed the
highest style of breeding, there is something refreshing in reading of
such animated scenes in high life. The crowning act of hostility to
Handel, was when the Earl of Middlesex himself assumed the profession
of manager of Italian operas, and engaged the king's theatre, with a
new composer, and a new company.

Handel had, for some time, been meditating a withdrawal from the
Opera, in order to devote himself exclusively to the composition of
sacred music, of which he had already produced several fine specimens.
He was wont to say, that this was an occupation 'better suited to the
circumstances of a man advancing in years, than that of adapting music
to such vain and trivial words as the musical drama generally consists
of.' The truth was, he had discovered his forte. But the tide of
fashionable feeling ran so strongly against him, that even the
performance of the oratorios of _Saul_ and _Israel in Egypt_ scarcely
paid expenses. Unwilling to submit his forthcoming _Messiah_ also to
the caprices of fashion, and the malignity of party, he wisely
embraced an opportunity which was opened to him of bringing out this
great work in Dublin, under singularly favourable auspices, and
crossed the Channel in November 1741.

Those who are acquainted with the Irish metropolis--not merely with
the handsome streets and squares eastward, which are now the abodes of
gentility, but with the dirty thoroughfares about the cathedrals--have
observed the large houses which some of them contain, now let in
single rooms to a wretched population, and need scarcely be told that
they were once the abodes of wealth and luxury. Fishamble Street, in
this quarter of the town, is one of the oldest streets in Dublin.
'Under the eastern gable of the ancient cathedral of Christ's Church,
separated and hidden from it by a row of houses, it winds its crooked
course down the hill from Castle Street to the Liffey, as forlorn and
neglected as other old streets in its vicinity. A number of
trunkmakers' shops give it an aspect somewhat peculiar; miserable
alleys open from it on t