of a new piece for the first night, was needless;
so that his song was "safe." Our orchestra
and chorus, again, have been worked up to an
efficiency of which the Arnes, and Shields, and
Dibdins, and Bishop—when he was writing
Mahmoud, and the Slave, and Cortez, and the
Fall of Java, and Clari, and his poor Aladdin, by
way of challenge to Weber's Oberon—never
dreamed. We may see, by-and-by, how this has
come to pass.

England's progress in respect to instrumental
music during the last thirty years is not less
singular, inconsistent, and worth studying.
Gain there has been, but not a tithe of what
might have been expected. In one important
section we have to admit retrogression. We
have no longer a central instrumental concert
on a level with those which are to be found in
Paris and in Germany. Our Philharmonic
Society,—which was in advance of its time in the
days when it could comfort the heart of a
Beethoven, by commissions which that unhappy man
of genius ceased to receive in his own country,
having there passed into temporary neglect
and disfavour—when it could honour itself by
bringing into immediate light the perfect
promise of Mendelssohn—has, owing to
mismanagement, favouritism, and the " mutual
admiration system," carried to its highest development
by well-meaning mediocrity, fallen back
in the ranks. Its day of liberal counsels is
over: its once skilful execution has become
slovenly and expressionless. Its significance,
in short, is gone; and nothing in the metropolis
has taken its place. For enterprise, liberality,
and research, for intelligence and spirit in
performance, the lover of the best orchestral
concert must now go to Manchester, where, thanks to
the presiding influence of one spirited and
thoroughly accomplished artist unhampered by the
forcible feebleness of committee deliberations,
the entertainment offered to the best and wisest
connoisseurship is, of its class, unique in this
island.

Thirty years ago, such love of instrumental
chamber music as existed in England made
little outward visible sign. It was stronger,
however, than some might have dreamed. Our
amateurs, among the middle classes especially
—few, comparatively, as were their opportunities
for instruction—form a company, whose
curiosity, prescience, and honest enthusiasm
have never had justice done them by those who
have glanced at the subject: and for a simple
reason. John Bull does not take to proficiency
on any instrument kindly. Considering how
adroit he can be with his hands and eyes, as a
shot, as a whip, it seems, at first sight, strange
that the neatness and readiness requisite for the
management of strings or pipe, should, with him,
"range at so low a figure." The patience of
the German, the dash of the Frenchman, the
instinct of the Italian, are not approached by
him when the technical details of execution
have to be mastered. But he must be cited as
second to none in appreciation. It would be
no bad story to tell, how from the recesses of
our shires to which communication was difficult
—how from the hideously dull and prosaic
streets of our manufacturing towns, an honest
desire to enjoy and to enlarge the circle of
their enjoyments, urged to those foreign cities,
where instrumental music was then at its
prime, men inexpert in foreign languages, and
to whom the novelties of travel did not then, as
to-day, come easily. There is hardly one great
instrumental musician who could not have told
how he was, at one period or other, approached
by the sympathy or patronage of some such
man. It is such men as these who "leavened
the lump"—in the midst of which our Handel-
worship, Haydn-worship, Mozart-worship,
Beethoven-worship, Mendelssohn-worship, have
successively been nourished with a constancy
and an enthusiasm such as have no continental
prototypes. That which Fashion, with its
wasteful munificence and foolish raptures, has
done for music in this country, forms no part
of the present subject: because, during the last
thirty years, at least, Fashion has followed rather
than led the movement; and now resorts
willingly where the people lead it. For years,
however, the current of love for chamber music
may be said to have been deepening and spreading
underground. It has lately burst out to
open day, and with a strength and brightness
peculiar to this country. It is no fashion which
holds thousands of listeners mute, whilst a
Joachim handles the antique and vigorous
preludes, chaconnes, and variations of Sebastian
Bach; or while a Hallé sets himself to draw
out, in all its delicacy, and depth, and charm of
beauty, the full expression and meaning of one
of Beethoven's wordless poems—for such are
his Sonatas. That our vast London audiences
enjoy the least showy and most intellectual works
of art, is among the phenomena which the course
of the last thirty years has brought about.

Thus much in scanty outline of some among
our losses and gains: one which, if filled up and
followed up, might include suggestions of some
among the reasons why the progress of creative
music in England has been so timid, so imitative
—so much more a matter of form than of fancy.
Seeing that our Tennysons do not try for the
melodies of any other country; that our Brownings
can discover harmonies as recondite, and
sequences as intricate as those combined by the
subtlest poetical transcendentalist who ever
tried to methodise his dreams, in Germany or in
Italy—we might have looked to the swarm of
clever English musicians, which has been busy in
creation during the last thirty years, for
something better than second-hand inspiration, for
some individuality of style and humour. But we
must have looked only to be disappointed—only
to find operatic reminiscences in plenty of Adam,
and Auber, and Mercadante, and Rossini's
ornaments, and Verdi's violences—or symphonic
ones of Spohr and Beethoven, and most and
newest of all (to a wearisome satiety) repetitions
of Mendelssohn's mannerisms—not of his
mind.

We are now coming to the point of retrospect