elements, and the character of the phenomena which produce it, or are
produced by it, is so general. I do not recall that anybody has ever
tried to ground this popular ignorance touching an art of which, by
right of birth, everybody is a critic. The unamiable nature of the
task, of which I am keenly conscious, has probably been a bar to such
an undertaking. But a frank diagnosis must precede the discovery of a
cure for every disease, and I have undertaken to point out a way in
which this grievous ailment in the social body may at least be
lessened.

[Sidenote: _Paucity of intelligent comment._]

[Sidenote: _Want of a model._]

It is not an exaggeration to say that one might listen for a lifetime
to the polite conversation of our drawing-rooms (and I do not mean by
this to refer to the United States alone) without hearing a symphony
talked about in terms indicative of more than the most superficial
knowledge of the outward form, that is, the dimensions and apparatus,
of such a composition. No other art provides an exact analogy for this
phenomenon. Everybody can say something containing a degree of
appositeness about a poem, novel, painting, statue, or building. If he
can do no more he can go as far as Landseer's rural critic who
objected to one of the artist's paintings on the ground that not one
of the three pigs eating from a trough had a foot in it. It is the
absence of the standard of judgment employed in this criticism which
makes significant talk about music so difficult. Nature failed to
provide a model for this ethereal art. There is nothing in the natural
world with which the simple man may compare it.