ip and the Oratory; the part played by music in the history of
God's dealings with man from first to last, from the thunders of Mount
Sinai to the trumpets of the Judgment; the mysterious and intimate
connection with the unseen world established by music, as it were the
unknown language of another state. Its quasi-sacramental efficacy,
_e.g._, in driving away the evil spirit in Saul and in bringing upon
Eliseus the spirit of prophecy; the grand pre-eminence of the organ in
that it gave the nearest representation of the voice of God, while the
sound of strings might be taken as more fitted to express the varying
emotions of man's state here on earth."[42]

[Footnote 40: _Essays_, i. Fifth Edit. 1881; Mozley, _Corr._ i. 194.]

[Footnote 41: _Idea_, dis. iv. 80.]

[Footnote 42: _Tablet_, 25 Aug. 1877.]

At Oxford, in his time, he said, there were none of the facilities for
music that now form part of the institutions of the place; there was
little to encourage individual musical talent. At St. Clement's we
only learn, "I had a dispute with my singers in May, which ended in
their leaving the church, and we now sing _en masse_,"[43] and in June
still, "My singers are quite mute."[44] At St. Mary's, Mr. Bennett,
who was killed on his way to Worcester Festival by the upsetting of a
coach,[45] and after him Mr. Elvey, elder brother of Sir George Elvey,
sometime organist at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, were Mr. Newman's
organists. "I shall never forget," writes a hearer, "the charm it was
to hear Elvey play the organ for the hymn at Newman's afternoon
parochial service at St. Mary's on a Sunday. The method was to play
the tune completely through on the organ before the voices took it up,
and the way he did it was simply perfect."

[Footnote 43: Mozley, _Corr._ i. 97.]

[Footnote 44: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 45: "There is a chant of his composing," writes a friend,
"which was reckoned at the time a stroke of genius--quite a new idea.
I have it in a Collection made by his father, who was organist of
Chichester Cathedral," and Bennett's elder brother "was my master at
Chichester in 1842. He used to speak of his brother's genius, and what
a loss he was to music."]

Still the Anglican service, taken as a whole, was scarcely then
calculated to stir artistic fervour, and this listener, so delighted
with Elvey at St. Mary's, went home to his village parish church only
to hear the hymn murdered, or if it were Advent, Christmas, or E