the remnant am I, by mine office, in virtue of mine oath, right especially bounden.

Wherefore I reckon myself deeply bounden to show you the peril of these books whereof the makers have such mischievous mind that they boast and glory when their ungracious writing bringeth any man to death. And yet make they semblance as though they were sorry for it. And then Tyndale crieth out upon the prelates and upon the temporal princes, and calleth them murderers and martyr-quellers, dissimuling that the cruel wretch with his wretched books, murdereth the man himself, while he giveth him the poison of his heresies, and thereby compelleth princes, by occasion of their incurable and contagious pestilence, to punish them according to justice by sore painful death, both for example and for infection of others.'

It is obvious that the More of the 'Utopia' is no longer the More of The Confutation' or of the coarse and scurrilous 'Vindicatio Henrici VIII. a calumniis Lutheri.' The Dialogue' proves that he had often attended the examination of heretics. As Lord Chancellor he swore to use all his power to destroy 'all manner of heresies.' It was a duty he discharged with zeal and with more mildness than Mr. Froude is willing to allow. As a judge he was obliged to enforce the statute De Haeretico Comburendo, and he cannot be held responsible for the law of the land. The stories of his cruelty to prisoners rest on the assertion of Foxe, and these seem to be untrustworthy. Mr. Froude urges that in the case of Thomas Philips and John Field the Chancellor was guilty of illegal action. Mr. Seebohm, however, has ably proved that the responsibility for Philips rests with the Bishop of London, and that the charge against Field was not heresy.

Henry VIII. had staked his all on the new Church Settlement, and the chief enemies of Church and State were the heretics who denied the Royal Supremacy. The English must accept one Church in one national State. The acknowledgment of Papal authority was therefore heresy to the former and treason to the latter. More was unable to follow this development of the king's policy, though in the 'Utopia' he had questioned the Divine institution of the Papacy. The way in which he paid the price for his refusal is one of our priceless heritages. When he first took office he nobly stipulated that he must first look to God, and after God to the king.

By the singular irony of history the persecutor of

the consciences of others died himself a martyr for the rights of conscience.

For a time More broke away from the spell of the past, the spell of custom, the spell of tradition, but in the end they proved too much for him. He was unable to understand to the very last that on the one hand the new tendencies at work were identifying the policy of Henry with that of the nation, while on the other the papacy was steadily becoming antinational. The conciliar movement attested the truth of the change in one direction, while the Papal policy after the Council of Trent attested it in another.

King Utopus himself, though he saw the absurdity of one man compelling another by force to accept his own belief, saw also that if it came to civil strife the best and holiest of religions would be trodden under foot by the vainest and the most superstitious. It is in vain for Dr. Gairdner to plead this exception and to argue that it was because More was by nature so tolerant that he entertained such a strong dislike to heretics who, in acts and deeds as well as in words, were quite ready to outrage the most cherished beliefs of the community. Thomas Paine asserted that Burke bid men sorrow for the plumage of the bird when it was dying. Furibus, 'homicidis haereticisque molestus' ran the Chancellor's epitaph, but it is not the least of our misfortunes that he was troublesome to honourable men. Sir Thomas More recited the fifty-first psalm on the scaffold, but the very policy of this conscientious man drove many to use it in similar circumstances. Roland Taylor said it amid the flames of martyrdom, and was struck on the mouth for not saying it in Latin; just as the Roman Catholics, who would not betray Parsons the Jesuit, were ill-treated at their execution for not saying it in English. It may not be altogether without significance that the first verse of this very psalm supplied the 'neck verse' of medieval justice, and that it fell from the dying lips of one who was as much a martyr to medievalism as to conscience.

ROBERT H. MURRAY.

A YEAR'S OPERA

I. La Musique en Russie. By CÉSAR CUI. Paris: G. Fischbacher. 1880.

2. Essai Historique sur la Musique en Russie. By ARTHUR POUGIN. Paris Librairie Fischbacher. 1904.

3. Moussorgsky. By M. D. CALVOCORESSI. Paris: Félix Alcan. 1911.

4. Mozart's Operas. By E. J. DENT. Chatto and Windus. 1913.

RE

EADERS of 'Crotchet Castle' may remember how Mr. Trillo was quoted by Lady Clarinda as maintaining that the sole end of all enlightened society was to get up a 'good opera,' and lamenting that 'wealth, genius, and energy were squandered upon other pursuits, to the neglect of this one great matter.' If Mr. Trillo had lived a couple of generations later than he did, he could still have lamented the absence in London of good opera, but being an Irishman he might have consoled himself by reflecting that in any case wealth, genius, and energy were squandered upon it, more particularly wealth and energy. Opera being regarded, now as then, by the majority of people as primarily a social entertainment, it is not usually in its direction that one looks for new or interesting music during the average season in London. The conditions which prevail at the stronghold, within the walls of which most of London's operas are given, make it practically impossible to get performances of such of the classics as have (or are supposed to have) only a limited appeal to a modern audience, or even of those which might be popular but which require a close ensemble and thoughtful stage management. As for quite new works, however important and however popular on the Continent, they are at Covent Garden seldom considered likely to conform to what is vaguely imagined to be the taste of the subscribers.

Gluck's 'Orfeo,' Mozart's 'Zauberflöte' and Verdi's 'Fal'staff' are three obvious instances of old works which ought to be given, but are not, for one or other of the reasons suggested; while the list of more modern works might begin with Ravel's 'L'heure Espagnole' and Dukas's 'Ariane et Barbe-Bleue,'

and could be indefinitely extended. Gluck's 'Armida,' it is true, was down in the prospectus of Covent Garden issued before the last season opened, and so was Boito's 'Mefistofele;' but subsequent events proved corrective to optimists. 'Don 'Giovanni' was indeed revived, but no one could say that the performance showed signs of attempts to co-ordinate details into any kind of consistent and intelligible whole. Those who look to the music of the past for their pleasure had to be content on the German side with some good performances of the Ring,' mostly conducted by Nikisch, and (thanks to the fact that 1913 was the centenary of Wagner's birth) with the production of three of the early works as well as of 'Tristan.' For French and Italian opera they were offered 'Aïda,' 'Faust,' and the rest of the hackneyed repertory, which generally managed to draw full houses by the aid of star casts but not always without them. The presence of Saint-Saëns, who was in London for a festival commemorating the 75th year of his musical career, gave distinction to one of the performances of Samson et Dalila,' and the return of Caruso provided a momentary thrill in some of the older works which are associated in the memory of opera-goers with his triumphs in the past. As to the more modern works in the repertory, 'Pelléas et Mélisande' and 'Louise' have held their own; Wolf-Ferrari's 'Giojelli della Madonna' made some sensation for reasons connected with the story rather than with the music; and Humperdinck's 'Königskinder,' though hardly eventful enough for the general public, once more left a deep impression by its sincerity and pathos in spite of the ultra-Teutonic mysticism of certain episodes and the over-elaboration of the orchestral treatment of the last act. Of actual novelties there was nothing better than 'La Du Barry' by Camussi and 'Oberst Chabert’ by von Waltershausen, each of them early works by quite young composers. The former opera is so entirely insignificant and so lacking in any sort of individual utterance that one can only wonder how it came to be accepted for production by the authorities; it had not even the theatrical effectiveness which helps to carry off a work with an audience often indifferent to the quality of the music in an opera. 'Oberst 'Chabert,' the libretto of which is a ridiculous travesty of one of Balzac's short stories, contained two moments of musical interest (one in the second act, one in the last) and several

indications that when the composer has ceased to imitate Richard Strauss he may develop an idiom of his own; but many of the scenes were quite unsuitable for musical treatment and the sentimentality of others, which were inserted under the mistaken idea of making the story effective for the stage, did not help to improve the work, though it was no doubt one of its chief causes of popularity in Germany. Charpentier's 'Julien,' the third new opera down for performance at Covent Garden, was not given at all, though it saw the light at the Opéra Comique in the first week of June.

As to Mr. Raymond Rôze's recent season of opera in English at Covent Garden, the chief good which has come out of it is the opportunity several young English musicians have had of gaining experience in conducting opera. Neither Mr. Hamilton Harty nor Mr. Frank Bridge nor Mr. Julius Harrison showed any special gifts in this direction, all three being accustomed only to symphonic music in the concert-room. But until opera is properly established in this country, both in London and the provinces, it is not to be expected that operatic conductors will be found ready-made when they are wanted for an occasion of this sort. Students of our established institutions are not taught even how to conduct a symphony, and for learning the practical technique of how to conduct an opera the only course open to them is to tour with a travelling company. That is how Sir Henry Wood and Mr. Landon Ronald, amongst others, acquired the rudiments of the art. We need not complain that Mr. Rôze's conductors were only learning their business: it will be more to the point to congratulate them on having the chance of trying their hands at conducting at all, even on such familiar material as 'Lohengrin,' 'Carmen,' and 'Faust.' Mr. Rôze's own opera, Joan of Arc,' it would be hardly worth while to take seriously, were it not for the ridiculous claims which the composer has made for it in his much-advertised manifesto. In this amazingly naïve and pretentious document he declares that he firmly believes that "Joan of Arc" will establish 'the English language in the position it should hold on the operatic stage once and for all.' Those who have heard it on the stage will be more inclined to say that such uniformly monotonous and nerveless music, written with little instinct for either musical or literary style, to an undramatic text