generally be silent. Certain truths concerning contemporary art seem
firmly grounded in the recorded past. The new Messiah never came with
instant wide acclaim. Many false prophets flashed brilliantly on the
horizon to fall as suddenly as they rose. In a refracted view we see the
figures of the great projected in too large dimension upon their day.
And precisely opposite we fail to glimpse the ephemeral lights obscuring
the truly great. The lesson seems never to be learned; indeed it can, of
course, never be learned. For that would imply an eternal paradox that
the present generation must always distrust its own judgment.

Who could possibly imagine in Schubert's time the sway he holds to-day.
Our minds reel to think that by a mere accident were recovered the
Passion of Bach and the symphonies of Schubert. Or must we prayerfully
believe that a Providence will make the best prevail? And, by the way,
the serious nature of this appreciation appears when we see how it was
ever by the greatest of his time that the future master was heralded.

The symphony of the present age has perhaps fallen somewhat in estate.
It was natural that it should rush to a high perfection in the halcyon
days of its growth. It is easy to make mournful predictions of
decadence. The truth is the symphony is a great form of art, like a
temple or a tragedy. Like them it has had, it will have its special eras
of great expression. Like them it will stay as a mode of utterance for
new communities and epochs with varying nationality, or better still,
with vanishing nationalism.

The tragedy was not exhausted with Sophocles, nor with Shakespeare nor
with Goethe. So the symphony has its fallow periods and it may have a
new resurgence under new climes. We are ever impatient to shelve a great
form, like vain women afraid of the fashion. It is part of our constant