and Mendelssohn, or the piano through which a household makes friends for life with Beethoven and Schumann, is more of a centre of musical life, and brings forth a hundred times more of it hour by hour, than the most elaborate presentations of work like Liszt's (anything but) Divine Comedy, or Rubinstein's Paradise (very decidedly) Lost, or the nightmare movements of the Harold and Lenore symphonies-not to mention a good many hundreds out of the thousand minutes occupied by Wagner's tetralogy—from which not one per cent. of the audience carry away a vestige even of the very sparse delight that they may have received.

But though, as long as the popular taste develops, the present prevalence of the phenomena here discussed might appear hardly to constitute a crisis in the history of the art, there is a deeper sense in which it may be the sign of one. On a broad view of musical life in its public and private aspects, it can hardly be denied that we are getting more and more used to the paucity of strains at ́ once perspicuous and magnificent in contemporary production, and turning more and more instinctively to the past for our greatest music. What does this portend? Is there something in it beyond the mere crowding out of untried work by what is well estab

lished in public favour-a crowding out which is to some extent inevitable in an art each of whose presentations must exclusively occupy a very appreciable space of time? We have among us writers of indisputable genius and enthusiasm, and the outer conditions of great public receptivity and an immense spread of musical knowledge are in their favour. Are the inner conditions equally favourable to true greatness and permanence in their work? or are they doomed by the very atmosphere into which they were born to be a generation of Epigoni ? The nature and history of Music both suggest that in this art the exceptional is what is to be expected; as regards creative originality, is it to be an exceptionally long meridian or an exceptionally rapid decline? Does the multitude of known directions in which the musical faculty of the inventive few, as well as of the uninventive many, has been led from childhood, leave unimpaired the aptitude for striking out into new directions, which, though new, shall have the power of drawing other ears into them with glad compulsion? Does the inevitable and lifelong possession of brain and heart by the crowd of haunting shapes which represent the inventive achievements of the last few generations, allow the old spring and scope for

spontaneous imaginings? Is there really a danger that the present progress of Music, where it is not towards chaos, is towards the ingenuity and complexity which would reduce it to the refined amusement of a small specially-gifted minority? Our third paradox taught us that comparatively short motives of arresting interest are necessary to great works will they cease? Our second paradox taught us that the note-material of our music is of modern development, and it has been assiduously racked and re-racked for combinations: will it hold out? Volkslieder like those of the past do not seem now to blossom up: can we look for an eternity of striking 'subjects' in concert-music or Opera?

I have not space to attempt a reply, even were a definite reply possible; but perhaps, as regards the public at large, we may find some solace in a reference to our first paradox. In Music, if anywhere, we may expect vitality in what for a generation and upwards have been lived on as masterpieces. For not only cannot musical structures crumble like earthly temples, but the very abstraction from outer regions of idea and sentiment which gives them their wide appeal, sets them out of danger from the changes and chances of political, religious, and social life.

96

A PERMANENT BAND FOR THE

EAST-END.

IN one of his admirable articles on social reform, the Rev. S. A. Barnett struck a true note in pointing out that the plain social duty of those whose lives are sheltered and prosperous to those whose lives are struggling and forlorn is the supply of what he boldly called luxuries. In the main it is possible, and if possible expedient, that the life of individuals. and families should be maintained by their own exertions. But that it should be made worth living by their own exertions, is often wholly impossible; seeing that the minutes and hours of which it is forced to consist have nothing worth living about them, and have no tendency to beget other minutes and hours better or brighter than themselves. Here, then, direct assistance gets its fair and boundless field. But the field is made up of two very distinct portions -the one concerned with the means of cleanliness, decency, and self-respect, the other with more

positive pleasures; and just because the importance of the former portion so much absorbs the thoughts and hopes of reformers, and the more positive enjoyments are regarded as an extra, is a reminder occasionally needed that to be clean, decent, and selfrespecting is by no means to live a life worth living. For most lives, excitement is not an extra but an essential—more truly a condition of health than even personal cleanliness. And of all charitable. duties, the provision of excitement in its higher forms is in one sense the plainest; seeing that while any other sort of direct giving is fraught with doubts and dangers, and needs to be cautiously planned indeed if it is to avoid the evil of encouraging thriftlessness and weakening self-reliance, this particular sort admits of neither doubt nor danger, and every atom of the gift represents so much sheer gain, without the possibility of drawback.

The reason why this view, which might be widely agreed to in theory, is not more boldly acted on, is, I believe, a lurking doubt as to the capacity for the higher enjoyments of persons whom fate has first condemned and then adapted to ugly and sordid conditions. It is thought that some amount of elevation in mind and habits

VOL. II.

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