Billington was so delighted with this praise that she gave Haydn a hearty kiss. This splendid portrait of the charming young singer is in the Lenox Library in New York.

Raphael's "St. Cecilia" has, of course, a history. In October of the year 1513, a noble lady of Bologna, named Elena Duglioli dall Olio, imagined that she heard supernatural voices bidding her to dedicate a chapel to St. Cecilia in the Church of S. Giovanni in Monte. Upon telling this to a relative, Antonio Pucci of Florence, he offered to fit up the chapel at his own expense, and induced his uncle, Lorenzo Pucci, then newly created a cardinal, to commission Raphael to paint a picture for the altar. It was finished in 1516.

Tradition relates that Pucci had no ear for music, and was laughed at by his brother cardinals when chanting mass in the Sistine Chapel. He thereupon invoked the aid of St. Cecilia, who rewarded the donor of her picture by remedying his harmonic deficiency.

In 1796, Napoleon's conquering army carried the painting to Paris, where it remained until 1815, when it was returned to Bologna. It was at a later date transferred to the art gallery of that city, where it now hangs. About the middle of the eighteenth century, when the agent of Augustus III., the Elector of Saxony, was negotiating the purchase of Italian paintings for the royal gallery in Dresden, the "St. Cecilia" was offered to him for $18,000, but the price was thought too high, and a copy by Denis Calvaert sufficed. This still hangs in the Zwinger at Dresden, the home of the Sistine Madonna. According to Vasari, the organ and other musical instruments in this picture were painted by one of the master's pupils, Giovanni da Udine. Raphael again designed a St. Cecilia in the now ruined fresco of her martyrdom, which either the master or one of his pupils painted in the chapel of the Pope's hunting castle of La Magliana, near Rome. Fortunately, Marc Antonio's engraving has preserved for us the composition of this work.

Of the many tributes to this "St. Cecilia," we will select the one by Shelley.

"We saw besides one picture of Raphael—St. Cecilia; this is in another and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it; and yet it is most unlike any of those things which we call reality. It is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead—she holds an organ in her hands—her countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. She is listening to the music of heaven, and, as I imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently point, by their attitudes, toward her; particularly St. John, who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance toward her, languid with the depth of his emotion. At her feet lie various instruments of music, broken and unstrung. Of the colouring I do not speak; it eclipses nature, yet has all her truth and softness."

Dryden's "Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687," set to music by Draghi, an Italian composer, ends with this verse, apposite to our picture:

"Orpheus could lead the savage race,
And trees uprooted left their place,
Sequacious of the lyre:
But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher;
When to her organ vocal breath was given,
An angel heard, and straight appeared,—
Mistaking earth for heaven!"

Ten years later he wrote his noble ode, "Alexander's Feast," in honour of St. Cecilia's festival, at the close of which he again refers to the saint's wondrous powers:

"Thus long ago,
Ere heaving bellows learn'd to blow,
While organs yet were mute,
Timotheus to his breathing flute
And sounding lyre,
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;
He raised a mortal to the skies,
She drew an angel down."

Handel, in 1736, produced his oratorio of "Alexander's Feast." Pope's "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," was written in 1708, and performed at Cambridge, in 1730, with music by Maurice Greene. In this composition the poet uses a similar image to Dryden. He sings:

"Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's severest rage disarm;
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please;
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
This the divine Cecilia found,
And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound.
When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,
Th' immortal pow'rs incline their ear;
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;
And angels lean from Heav'n to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell,
To bright Cecilia greater pow'r is given;
His numbers rais'd a shade from Hell,
Hers lift the soul to Heav'n."

PALESTRINA.

Some twenty miles from Rome, the insignificant but picturesquely situated town of Palestrina, lies on the hillside. The Praeneste of antiquity, it was once an important colony of Rome, many of whose wealthy ones resorted thither in summer, for the sake of its bracing atmosphere, which Horace extolled. Excavations here have yielded a rich harvest, and the Eternal City holds among its ancient treasures few of more interest or value than those recovered from the soil of Palestrina.

Palestrina. From painting by Ferdinand Heilbruth.

Here, probably in 1524, was born Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who received his last name from that of his native town. His parents were of humble station in life, but, beyond this fact, we know little that is reliable about his youth or early education. In 1540 he went to Rome, and became a pupil at the music school of Claudio Goudimel, a French composer, who turned Protestant, and perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. Palestrina appears to have returned to his birthplace when he was about twenty years old, and to have been made organist and director of music in the cathedral. He married in 1546, and had several sons, but in 1551 was again in Rome, where he held the position of teacher of the boy singers in the Capella Giulia, in the Vatican. While holding this office, he composed a set of masses, which he dedicated to Julius III., and which were