information, and as an incentive to further investigation.

For our first sketch we have chosen the oratorio, for it is undoubtedly
the highest form of musical dramatic art, and is founded upon and
contains the greatest and deepest truths of the Christian life. As
regards the actual music forms employed, we find, indeed, similar ones
in the operas, such as the various forms of recitative, the aria, the
duet, and the chorus, and even the scena; but in the sacred works, who
are the heroes and heroines? Are they not the instruments of the Divine
power, the messengers of the good tidings? And what are the subjects?
Are they not the struggles, the trials, the victories of noble souls?
With such sacred characters, with such lofty thoughts, the composers of
the oratorio, dealing, not with the semblance of truth that the opera
contains, but with the truth itself, are bound to express their feelings
and emotions in the grandest and most perfect thoughts.

Purely sentimental ideas, and the whole list of passions and struggles
in human existence, rather form the basis of opera than the proper
subjects for oratorio, and the modern attempts to transform the sacred
ideal into the region of operatic and dramatic realism seem to fall
singularly short of expectation. To our minds, the strongest period in
the history of oratorio was the time of Handel and Bach, and writers of
to-day have yet to graft on to their work the more careful study, and
the strengthening influence of these noble masterpieces in stronger
cuttings, to make the struggling young plant a healthy and beautiful
tree. Let us progress, by all means, but true progression is but the
joining of all that is good in the preceding age with all the fresh
beauty God bestows upon us in this our day.

We seem to be comparing or contrasting the secular form opera and the