248 THOUGHTS ON THE SUBLIME IN MUSIC. 



department of that art : those works, therefore, which excel in this 

 style, should receive the highest admiration. But this style is, also, 

 the most difficult to excel in, as well as to understand ; hence it has 

 so limited a number of votaries, and touches the hearts of so few ; 

 hence it is that the art, after it has risen to a certain pitch of excel- 

 lence, assumes every year a less exalted character, and that sacred 

 music is more and more debased by vulgar harmonies and operatic 

 divisions ; until (which is now taking place) the public, disgusted 

 by the degradation which it has itself brought about, recurs to the 

 works of former times, and revives in itself that taste for excellence, 

 and that appreciation of the real merits of compositions, to which it 

 has been so long a stranger. 



All persons generally call compositions they cannot understand 

 dry and pedantic, and feel pleased only with those they compre- 

 hend ; ought they not, therefore, instead of railing at the immortal 

 works of other ages, to endeavour, by a long and deep study of 

 their excellencies, to render themselves capable of appreciating these 

 relics of the mighty dead ? It is only the lower walks of any art 

 that are naturally pleasing ; the higher, to become so, require long 

 study, but, when once understood, afford a satisfaction to which 

 the admirers of the former are strangers ; they possess the power of 

 abstracting the mind from all surrounding objects, and of relieving 

 it from care and sorrow itself. Sir Joshua Reynolds confesses that 

 on first beholding the Cartoons of Raphaelle he felt disappointed, 

 but that, after a closer investigation,, he became so enraptured that 

 he could hardly satiate his admiration of them. So it is with the 

 sacred works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; they at 

 first appear dry, pedantic, and antiquated, but gradually become 

 more and more pleasing, until the mind, carried away by their sub- 

 limity, rises far above the earth, its petty cares and sorrows, and 

 soars in a region of lofty and unalloyed pleasure — we may almost 

 say enchantment — utterly unknown to the exclusive admirers of the 

 pretty, the elegant, and what they term the expressive. 



" However persons may differ respecting this profusion of orna- 

 ment, when applied to secular compositions, there can surely be but 

 one opinion as to their admission into the church. Sacred music, as 

 a medium of divine communications, ought to possess a character of 

 its own, so distinct from the music of the concert room as in no 

 respect to recal vain and idle associations."* Unhappily, however, 

 for music, instead of unity of opinion on this subject, we should 



* Music of the Church, by the Rev. J. Latrobe. 



