ixteenth century onwards to the age of Gluck,
Handel, Haydn and Mozart. Had the music of the Church in Italy been
confined at that epoch to Plain Song, as the Congregation of Reform
threatened, the great Italian school of vocalization would not have been
founded, the Conservatories of Naples and the Scuole of Venice would
have been silent, and the style upon which, dating from Palestrina's
inventions, the evolution of all species of the art proceeded, would
have passed into oblivion.

That this proposition is not extravagant, the history of music in
England will suffice to prove. Before the victory of Puritan principles
in Church and State, the English were well abreast of other races in
this art. During the sixteenth century, Tallis, Byrd, Morland, Wilbye,
Dowland and Orlando Gibbons could hold their own against Italian
masters. The musical establishments of cathedrals, royal and collegiate
chapels, and noble houses were nurseries for artists. Every English
home, in that age, like every German home in the eighteenth century,
abounded in amateurs who were capable of performing part-songs and
concerted pieces on the lute and viol with correctness. Under the
_regime_ of the Commonwealth this national growth of music received a
check from which it never afterwards recovered. Though the seventeenth
century witnessed the rising of one eminent composer, Purcell; though
the eighteenth was adorned with meritorious writers of the stamp of Blow
and Boyce; yet it is obvious that the art remained among us
unprogressive, at a time when it was making gigantic strides in Italy
and Germany. It is always dangerous to attribute the decline of art in a
nation to any one cause. Yet I think it can scarcely be contested that
the change of manners and of temperament wrought in England by the
prevalence of Puritan opinion, had much to answer for in this premature
decay of music. We may therefore fairly argue that if the gloomy passion
of intolerant fanaticism which burned in men like Caraffa and Ghislieri
had prevailed in Italy--a passion analogous in its exclusiveness to
Puritanism--or if no composer, in the place of Palestrina, had satisfied
the requirements of the Council and the congregation, the history of
music in Italy and Europe to us-wards would have been far different.

These considerations are adduced to justify the importance attached by
me to the episode of which Palestrina was the hero. Yet it should not be
forgotten that other