rage for novelty. The shallower artist ever tinkered with new
devices,--to some effects, in truth. Such is the empiric course of art
that what is born of vanity may be crowned with highest inspiration.

The national element will fill a large part of our survey. It marks a
strange trait of our own age that this revival of the national idea
falls in the very time when other barriers are broken. Ancient folk-song
grew like the flower on the battle-field of races. But here is an
anxious striving for a special dialect in music. Each nation must have
its proper school; composers are strictly labelled, each one obedient to
his national manner. This state of art can be but of the day. Indeed,
the fairest promise of a greater future lies in the morrow's blending of
these various elements in the land where each citizen has a mixed
inheritance from the older nations.

In the bewildering midst of active spirits comes the irresistible
impulse to a somewhat partisan warfare. The critic, if he could view
himself from some empyraean perch, remote in time and place, might smile
at his own vehemence. In the clash of aims he must, after all, take
sides, for it is the tendency that is momentous; and he will be excited
to greater heat the stronger the prophet that he deems false. When the
strife is over, when currents are finally settled, we may take a more
contented joy in the impersonal art that remains.

The choice from the mass of brilliant vital endeavor is a new burden and
a source almost of dismay. Why should we omit so melodious a work as
Moskowski's _Jeanne d'Arc_,--full of perhaps too facile charm? It was,
of course, impossible to treat all the wonderful music of the Glazounows
and the Kallinikows. And there is the limpid beauty of the Bohemian
_Suk_, or the heroic vigor of a _Volbach_. We should like to have