482 
COMMEMORATION OF HANDEL. 
high state of cultivation, to which practical music has at present 
arrived in this country ; for if good performers had not been found 
ready made, a dozen rehearsals would not have been sufficient to 
make them so. At this general rehearsal, above five hundred persons 
found means to obtain admission, in spite of every endeavour to shut out 
all but the performers, for fear of interruption, and perhaps of failure 
in the first attempts at incorporating and consolidating such a nume- 
rous band, consisting not only of all the regulars, both native and 
foreign, that the capital could furnish, but of all the irregulars, that 
is, dilettanti, and provincial musicians of character, who could be 
mustered, many of whom had never seen or heard each other before. 
This intrusion suggested the idea of turning the eagerness of the pub- 
lic to some profitable account for the charity, by fixing the price of 
admission to half-a-guinea for each person. 
“The public did not manifest great eagerness in securing tickets till 
after this rehearsal, Friday, May 21, which astonished even the per- 
formers themselves by its correctness and effect. But so interesting 
did the undertaking become by this favourable rumour, that from the 
great demand of tickets it was necessary to close the subscription. 
Many families, as well as individuals, were attracted to the capital 
by its celebrity ; and it was never remembered to have been so full, 
except at the coronation of his late majesty George III. Many per- 
formers came, unsolicited, from the remotest parts of the kingdom, at 
their own expense ; some of them however were afterwards reimbursed, 
and had a small gratuity, in consideration of the time they had been kept 
from their families by the two unexpected additional performances. 
“ Foreigners, particularly the French, must be most astonished at 
so numerous a band moving in such exact measure, without the 
assistance of a coryphieus to beat the time, either with a roll of paper, 
a noisy baton, or a truncheon. Rousseau says, that the more time 
is beaten, the less it is kept; and it is certain that when the measure 
is broken, the fury of the musical general increasing with the dis- 
obedience and confusion of his troops, he becomes more violent, and 
his strokes and gesticulations more ridiculous, in proportion to their 
disorder. As this commemoration is not only the first instance of a 
band of such magnitude being assembled together, but of any band, 
at all numerous, performing in a similar situation, without the assist- 
ance of a manuductor to regulate the measure, the performances in 
Westminster Abbey may be safely pronounced no less remarkable for 
the multiplicity of voices and instruments employed, than for accuracy 
and precision. When all the wheels of that huge machine, the orches- 
tra, were in motion, the effect resembled clock-work in every thing, 
with the addition of feeling and expression. And as the power and 
gravity of attraction in bodies is proportioned to their mass and den- 
sity, so it seemed as if the magnitude of this band had commanded 
and impelled adhesion and obedience, beyond that of any other of 
inferior force. The pulsations in every limb, and ramifications in every 
vein and artery, in an animal, could not be more reciprocally isochro- 
nous, and under the regulation of the heart, than the members of 
this body of musicians were under that of the conductor and leader. The 
totality of sound seemed to proceed from one voice and one instrument. 
