levating subjects from which, happily their own minds derive
gratification_."--"Hints," pp. 8, 9.

Should these Lectures again interest any of the large and attentive
audiences with which they were honoured, I will consider myself
justified in having consented to their publication, and feel happy to be
the medium of imparting information, even on a secular subject, to those
whom it is my duty, and is my pleasure, to profit and please.

It is scarcely necessary for me to say, biographical lectures are
chiefly the result of reading and research;[C] I have, however, somewhat
fully expressed my opinions on the advantages of music, and very freely
on one or two cognate subjects, and others incidentally alluded to.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: "Rules and Regulations of the Wimbledon Village Club," p.
1.]

[Footnote B: "Hints on the Formation of Local Museums, by the Treasurer
of the Wimbledon Museum Committee," p. 27.]

[Footnote C: Works referred to, and extracted from, in the following
Lectures:--Besides those mentioned in the Lectures, the following works
are alluded to, or quoted;--Beattie's Essays; Burnet's History of Music;
Hogart's Musical History; Edwards's History of the Opera; The
Harmonicon; Schlegel's Life of Handel; Holmes' Life of Mozart;
Moschele's Life of Beethoven.]

A SKETCH OF HANDEL.

A Lecture.

Before I say of that great composer and extraordinary man whose life I
have undertaken to sketch, it will not be out of place, I hope, to make
a few remarks on the History and Utility of Music.

I.--THE HISTORY.

It has been well said by Latrobe, that--though the concise and
compressed character of the Mosaic history admits no data upon which to
found this supposition, yet we may readily conclude from the nature of
music, and the original perfection of the human powers, that the Garden
of Eden was no stranger to "singing and the voice of melody."

We read in Scripture that before the Fall, the state of our first
parents was a state of unmingled happiness. Now, it is the very nature
of joy to give utterance to its emotions. Happiness must have its
expression. And thus it may well be supposed that man in his primal
felicity would seek to express, by every conceivable mode, the love,
gratitude, and joy which absorbed every affection of his nature.

Now, the most natural, as well as powerful, medium for conveying those
feelings with which we are acquainted, is music. If then music be the
expres