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write about melody. Lord Jeffreys was a good afterdinner vocalist, and was esteemed a high authority on questions concerning instrumental performance. Lord Camden was an operatic composer; and Lord Thurlow studied thorough-bass, in order that he might direct the musical exercises of his children.

In moments of depression More's favorite solace was the viol; and so greatly did he value musical accomplishments in women, that he not only instructed his first and girlish wife to play on various instruments, but even prevailed on the sour Mistress Alice Middleton "to take lessons on the lute, the cithara, the viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she daily practised to him." But More's love of music was expressed still more forcibly in the zeal with which he encouraged and took part in the choral services of Chelsea Church. Throughout his residence at Chelsea, Sir Thomas was a regular attendant at the church, and during his tenure of the seals he not only delighted to chant the appointed psalms, but used to don a white surplice, and take his place among the choristers. Having invited the Duke of Norfolk to dine with him, the Chancellor prepared himself for the enjoyment of that great peer's society by attending divine service, and he was still occupied with his religious exercises when his Grace of Norfolk entered the church, and to his inexpressible astonishment saw the keeper of the king's conscience in the flowing raiment of a chorister, and heard him give "Glory to God in the highest!" as though he were a hired singer. "God's body! God's body! My Lord Chancellor a parish clerk?-a parish clerk ?" was the duke's testy expostulation with the Chancellor. Whereupon More, with gentle gravity, answered, "Nay; your grace may not think that the king your master and mine-will with me, for serving his Master, be offended, and thereby account his office

dishonored." Not only was it More's custom to sing in the church choir, but he used also to bear a cross in religious processions; and on being urged to mount horse when he followed the rood in Rogation week round the parish boundaries, he answered, "It beseemeth not the servant to follow his master prancing on a cockhorse, his master going on foot." Few incidents in Sir Thomas More's remarkable career point more forcibly to the vast difference between the social manners of the sixteenth century and those of the present day. If Lord Chelmsford were to recreate himself with leading the choristers in Margaret Street, and after service were seen walking homewards in an ecclesiastical dress, it is more than probable that public opinion would declare him a fit companion for the lunatics of whose interests he has been made the official guardian. Society felt some surprise as well as gratification when Sir Roundell Palmer recently published his 'Book of Praise; but if the Attorney General, instead of printing his select hymns had seen fit to exemplify their beauties with his own voice from the stall of a church-singer, the piety of his conduct would have scarcely reconciled Lord Palmerston to its dangerous eccentricity.

Amongst Elizabethan lawyers, Chief Justice Dyer was by no means singular for his love of music, though Whetstone's lines have given exceptional celebrity to his melodious proficiency:

"For publique good, when care had cloid his minde,
The only joye, for to repose his sprights,

Was musique sweet, which showd him well inclind;
For he doth in musique much delight,

A conscience hath disposed to do most right:

The reason is, her sound within our eare,
A sympathie of heaven we thinke we heare."

Like James Dyer, Francis Bacon found music a plea

sant and salutary pastime, when he was fatigued by the noisy contentions of legal practice or by strenuous application to philosophic pursuits. A perfect master of the science of melody, Lord Bacon explained its laws with a clearness which has satisfied competent judges that he was familiar with the practice as well as the theories of harmony; but few passages of his works display more agreeably his personal delight and satisfaction in musical exercise and investigation than that section of the 'Natural History,' wherein he says, "And besides I practice as I do advise; which is, after long inquiry of things immersed in matter, to interpose some subject which is immateriate or less materiate; such as this of sounds: to the end that the intellect may be rectified and become not partial."

A theorist as well as performer, the Lord Keeper Guilford enunciated his views regarding the principles of melody in 'A Philosophical Essay of Musick, Directed to a Friend—a treatise that was published without the author's name, by Martin, the printer to the Royal Society, in the year 1677, at which time the future keeper was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. The merits of the tract are not great; but it displays the subtlety and whimsical quaintness of the musical lawyer, who performed on several instruments, was very vain of a feeble voice, and used to attribute much of his professional success to the constant study of music that marked every period of his life. “I have heard him say," Roger records, "that if he had not enabled himself by these studies, and particular his practice of music upon his bass or lyra viol (which he used to touch lute-fashion upon his knee), to divert himself alone, he had never been a lawyer. His mind was so airy and volatile he could not have kept his chamber if he must needs be there, staked down purely to the drudgery of the law,

whether in study or practice; and yet upon such a leaden proposition, so painful to brisk spirits, all the success of the profession, regularly pursued, depends." His first acquaintance with melodious art was made at Cambridge, where in his undergraduate days he took lessons on the viol. At this same period he "had the opportunity of practice so much in his grandfather's and father's families, where the entertainment of music in full concert was solemn and frequent, that he outdid all his teachers, and became one of the neatest violinists of his time." Scarcely in consistence with this declaration of the Lord Keeper's proficiency on the violin is a later passage of the biography, where Roger says that his brother "attempted the violin, being ambitious of the prime part in concert, but soon found that he began such a difficult art too late." It is, however, certain that the eminent lawyer in the busiest passages of his laborious life found time for musical practice, and that besides his essay on music, he contributed to his favorite art several compositions which were performed in private concert

rooms.

Sharing in the musical tastes of his family, Roger North, the biographer, was the friend who used to touch the harpsichord that stood at the door of the Lord Keeper's bed-chamber; and when political changes had extinguished his hopes of preferment, he found consolation in music and literature. Retiring to his seat in Norfolk, Roger fitted up a concert-room with instruments that roused the astonishment of country squires, and an organ that was extolled by critical professors for the sweetness of its tones. In that seclusion, where he lived to extreme old age, the lettered lawyer composed the greater part of those writings which have rendered him familiar to the present generation. Of his 'Memoirs of Musick,' readers are not accustomed to speak so gratefully as of

his biographies; but the curious sketch which Dr. Rimbault edited and for the first time published in 1846, is worthy of perusal, and will maintain a place on the shelves of literary collectors by the side of his brother's 'Essay.'

In that treatise Roger alludes to a contest which in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. agitated the musicians of London, divided the Templars into two hostile parties, and for a considerable time gave rise to quarrels in every quarter of the town. All this disturbance resulted from "a competition for an organ in the Temple church, for which the two competitors, the best artists in Europe, Smith and Harris, were but just not ruined.” The struggle thus mentioned in the 'Memoirs of Musick' is so comic an episode in the story of London life, and has been the occasion of so much error amongst writers, that it claims brief restatement in the present chapter.

In February, 1682, the Benchers of the Temples, wishing to obtain for their church an organ of superlative excellence, invited Father Smith and Renatus Harris to compete for the honor of supplying the instrument. The masters of the benchers pledged themselves that “if each of these excellent artists would set up an organ in one of the halls belonging to either of the societies, they would have erected in their church that which, in the greatest number of excellencies, deserved the preference." For more than twenty years Father Smith had been the first organ-builder in England; and the admirable qualities of his instruments testify to his singular ability. A German artist (in his native country called Bernard Schmidt, but in London known as Father Smith), he had established himself in the English capital as early as the summer of 1660; and gaining the cordial patronage of Charles II., he and his two grand-nephews soon be

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