s bourgeois lays. The
music runs through so many phases of emotion, and approves itself so
original and exaltedly vivid in each that I put it well to the fore
of American compositions.

Hardly less large is the--Loomis calls it "Musical Symbolism," for
Adelaide Ann Proctor's "The Story of the Faithful Soul." Of the
greatest delicacy imaginable is the music (for piano, violin, and
voice) to William Sharp's "Coming of the Prince." The "Watteau
Pictures" are poems of Verlaine's variously treated: one as a
head-piece to a wayward piano caprice, one to be recited during a
picturesque waltz, the last a song with mandolin effects in the
accompaniment.

[Music:

How, erect, at the outermost gates of the City
Celestial he waits,
With his feet on the ladder of light,
That, crowded with angels unnumbered,
By Jacob was seen as he slumbered
Alone in the desert at night?
The Angels of Wind and of Fire
Chant only one hymn, and expire
With the song's irresistible stress,
Expire in their rapture and wonder,
As harp-strings are broken asunder
By music they throb to express.
But serene in the rapturous throng,
Unmoved by the rush of the song,
With eyes unimpassioned and slow,
Among the dead angels, the deathless
Sandalphon stands listening, breathless,
To sounds that ascend from below,...

Copyright, 1896, by Edgar S. Werner.

A FRAGMENT OF "SANDALPHON," BY H.W. LOOMIS.]

The pantomimes range from grave to gay, most of the librettos in this
difficult form being from the clever hand of Edwin Starr Belknap.
"The Traitor Mandolin," "In Old New Amsterdam," "Put to the Test,"
"Blanc et Noir," "The Enchanted Fountain," "Her Revenge," "Love and
Witchcraft" are their names. The music is full of wit, a quality
Loomis possesses in unusual degree. The music mimics everything from
the busy feather-duster of the maid to her eavesdropping. Pouring
wine, clinking glasses, moving a chair, tearing up a letter, and a
rollicking wine-song in pantomime are all hinted with the drollest and
most graphic programmism imaginable.

Loomis has also written two burlesque operas, "The Maid of Athens" and
"The Burglar's Bride," the libretto of the latter by his brother,
Charles Battell Loomis, the well-known humorist. This latter contains
some skilful parody on old fogyism.

In the Violin Sonata the piano, while granting precedence to the
violin, approaches almost to the dignity