news reaching him, "are the French trumpeters
now to learn how to play out of tune?"

It was when matters were darkest that M.
Perrin, and those whom he represented, began
to agitate for stricter examination of those
professing to take charge of military music — for
better pay — for some consideration and chance,
such as should encourage restless and aspiring
youths to keep constant to their branch of the
service. — Accordingly, in 1856, a series of
regulations was recommended, adopted,and ordained,
by which at once greater strictness in selection of
the players was ensured, by which some ameliorations
in point of pay and promotion were settled:
and some recognition, in short, was made by the
military authorities, that if bands there were to
be, they should be good of their kind — goodness
being unattainable under circumstances of
parsimonious cheapness, of perpetual discouragement,
desertion, and change. The result many travellers
already know. The improvement in the military
music of France has been rapid and striking. A
parade at Metz or Toulouse is no longer an infliction
to be escaped from by those who have ears;
and (the author of E?then will please to forgive
our partialities in favour of our born enemies)
testimony is agreed, that the heartening use and
comfort of music was not the least of the
superiorities in organisation which our allies
possessed, over ourselves, throughout the stormy
time of the Crimean struggle. If from one,
from twenty English witnesses, we have heard
of the cheeriness of the French bands as a feature
of the leaguer of Sebastopol. Ours were all
but, if not altogether, broken up and disbanded;
and our men had to swallow their green coffee,
as well as they could, in disheartened (not,
therefore, cowardly) silence.

It has occurred of late days to many intelligent
Englishmen, military as well as musical, private
as well as professional, that something analogous
to what has been effected in France might be done
at home. The stride made by England generally
in music, is a fact past denial. We have in London
the best orchestra in Europe. We have the best
chorus-singers, and by thousands, where France
and even Germany number them by hundreds.
We have as much real artistic instinct (developed
under its own conditions) among our people as
exists in any other country under the sun.
What is more — what is most (and this may be
said without any cresting of paltry insular pride)
—the general tone, temper, and intelligence
among our rising musicians are higher than those
existing among any contemporary people. The
"roughs" who used to make up the bulk of our
bands, theatrical and military — ay, and who sang
in our cathedrals, whitened over with saintly
surplices — know their places no more. Music of any
kind cannot thrive here without those who practise
it make a show, at least, of respecting themselves.
Consequently, then, the English musician
who has harder duties to perform, and a more
severe competition to abide than formerly, has a
right to expect, in turn, to be better respected as
a musician. — There is enough machinery, as it is,
in the life of such as those we are considering, to
be worked without its being made needlessly
hard, thankless, and profitless, by its being tied
up in the fetters of red tape, or jerked about at
the caprice of thoughtless amateurship.

Our military bands are maintained, be it
remembered, on the voluntary system, or rather
as an obligation of honour and show among the
officers of the regiments, who subscribe for their
support, and control their services accordingly.
Government furnishes nothing but drums, fifes,
bugles, and field trumpets. This system,
obviously, prevents anything like possible or steady
uniformity, opens the way to favouritism, to
indulgence, or else to unfair exactions. — A
bandmaster may get his place by influence, not
competence; and supposing him to have got it, to
be anxious to do his duty, and to train up his
squadron efficiently, with some pride in his art,—
he may be interfered with every day of the week,
supposing those in authority above him are good
natured, and belong to a gay world. Weary is
the tale of enforced contributions to fancy fairs,
archery meetings, open-air balls, which many a
jaded flute, fife, and bassoon could count up in
excuse, should any one complain of a slack or
coarse performance in the barrack-yard, or within
palace precincts.

The pay, again, is insufficient to represent the
requirements of our time. In our Guards' bands,
the solo players — men eligible to do the finest
work which can be claimed from their instruments,
and whose education must have been an
affair of years — receive at the utmost two
shillings a day beyond their thirteen-pence as
soldiers. In our line regiments, excellent
performers (we are assured by those familiar with
the subject) may from time to time be found
receiving no better pay than the thirteen-pence
aforesaid, until, for good conduct, they are
decorated with a stripe, which implies an extra
penny — a second, a third, and a fourth — in all,
seventeen-pence a day, suppose the service shall
last one-and-twenty years. This rarely happens.
Desertions are frequent from the bands. The
players (and no wonder!) better themselves
whenever they can; and in consequence, an inferior
class of musicians, for ever liable to change of
place and duty, is perpetuated and multiplied.
We have bandmasters who, however respectable
as men, could not, to save their right hands, read
a score, nor, to keep their heads on their
shoulders, write one, — musicians so-called who
know in only the most empirical and accidental
way the qualities, duties, and uses of the instruments
they have to marshal — and yet who are
expected  to train players. We have an average of
subordinates than whom no one can well stand
lower in the scale of musical intelligence — adults
and boys, with some original propensity for music,
who, after a time, become weary of themselves
and their work, and exchange their part in helping
to make a sound which signifies nothing for
the easier labours of privates in the ranks.

It is true that some few years since our military
magnates made the experiment at establishing
a training college for bandsmen in the immediate
vicinity of London. The establishment