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FAMOUS SONGS
rare, impressive grandeur. The connecting link between religion and patriotism which the Ger-man choral embodies is peculiarly national It finds its explanation in the history of the coun,-try, where, as in Scotland of old, the struggle for Protestant freedom of thought was for a time identified with the sentiment of national autonomy. The choral possesses the charac-teristics which belong only to those creations which are essentially an outcome of national sentiment, and therefore has retained a hold over the people, which the Catholic " Te Deum" has lost, and which t h e Anglican scholarly h y m n -book never possessed.
With regard to patriotism, it may be averred that, amid the darkest hours of national disaster, from the time of the Thirty Years' War down to our own time, the German Lied has kept the flame of patriotism burning. In the War of Liberation of 1813, song did almost as much as the sword. And in 1870 the famous song of " The Watch on the Rhine" played a part which it would be impossible to understand without knowing something of German life and character.
Let us now turn to that world-famous song of Beethoven's, the divinely sweet " Adelaide." Who has not heard it? But how few know
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