not know that there are to be heard sounds in a greater perfection of
orchestral melody than are to be procured by money and trouble combined
in the great capitals of Europe? Think of the trouble endured by those
unhappy fathers of families who indulge their wives and daughters at the
Philharmonic and St. James's Hall! Think of the horrors of our theatres,
with their hot gas, and narrow passages, and difficulties of entrance,
and almost impossibility of escape! And for all this money has to be
paid,--high prices,--and the day has to be fixed long beforehand, so that
the tickets may be secured, and the daily feast,--papa's too often
solitary enjoyment,--has to be turned into a painful early fast. And when
at last the thing has been done, and the torment endured, the sounds
heard have not always been good of their kind, for the money has not
sufficed to purchase the aid of a crowd of the best musicians. But at
Monte Carlo you walk in with your wife in her morning costume, and
seating yourself luxuriously in one of those soft stalls which are there
prepared for you, you give yourself up with perfect ease to absolute
enjoyment. For two hours the concert lasts, and all around is perfection
and gilding. There is nothing to annoy the most fastidious taste. You
have not heated yourself with fighting your way up crowded stairs; no
box-keeper has asked you for a shilling. No link-boy has dunned you
because he stood useless for a moment at the door of your carriage. No
panic has seized you, and still oppresses you, because of the narrow
dimensions in which you have to seat yourself for the next three hours.
There are no twenty minutes during which you are doomed to sit in
miserable expectation. Exactly at the hour named the music begins, and
for two hours it is your own fault if you be not happy. A
railway-carriage has brought you to steps leading up to the garden in
which these princely halls are built, and when the music is over will
again take you home. Nothing can be more perfect than the concert-room
at Monte Carlo, and nothing more charming; and for all this there is