s an
illusion and the days are shadows.

George Frederick Handel was born in Sixteen Hundred Eighty-five, and
died in Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. His dust rests in Westminster
Abbey, and above the tomb towers his form cut in enduring marble. There
he stands, serene and poised, accepting benignly the homage of the
swift-passing generations. For over a hundred years this figure has
stood there in its colossal calm, and through the cathedral shrines, the
aisles, and winding ways of dome and tower, Handel's music still peals
its solemn harmonies.

At Exeter Hall is another statue of Handel, seated, holding in his hand
a lyre. At the Foundling Hospital (which he endowed) is a bust of the
Master, done in Seventeen Hundred Fifty-eight; and at Windsor is the
original of still another bust that has served for a copy of the very
many casts in plaster and clay that are in all the shops.

There are at least fifty different pictures of Handel, and nearly this
number were brought together, on the occasion of a recent Handel and
Haydn Festival, at South Kensington.

When Gladstone once referred to Handel as our greatest English
Composer, he refused to take it back even when a capricious critic
carped and sneezed.

Handel essentially belongs to England, for there his first battles were
fought, and there he won his final victory. To be sure, he did some
preliminary skirmishing in Germany and Italy; but that was only getting
his arms ready for that conflict which was to last for half a century--a
conflict with friends, foes and fools.

But Handel was too big a man to be undermined by either the fulsome
flattery of friends, or the malice of enemies, who were such only
because they did not understand. And so always to the fore he marched,
zigzagging occasionally, but the Voice said to him, as it did to
Columbus, "Sail on, and on, and on." Like the soul of John Brown, the
spirit of Handel goes marching on. And Sir Arthur Sullivan was right
when he said, "Musical England owes more to Father Handel than to any
other ten men who can be named--he led the way for us all, and cut out a
score that we can only imitate."

* * * * *

At the Court of George of Brunswick, at Hanover, in Seventeen Hundred
Nine, was George Frederick Handel, six feet one, weight one hundred
eighty, rubicund, rosy, and full of romp, aged twenty-four. George of
Brunswick was to have the felicity of being King George the First of
E