more truth in this theory than the other? Hypocrisy is not generally
so lasting as the musical fervour has proved itself to be. A fashion
is the affair of a season; a mania goes as it came; but regularly and
steadily, for many years back, has musical appreciation been
progressing, and as regularly have the opportunities for hearing good
music of all kinds been extending.

Take up a daily newspaper, published any time between April and
August, and range your eye down the third or fourth column of the
first page--what an endless array of announcements of music, vocal and
instrumental! Music for the classicists; music for the crowd;
symphonies and sonatas; ballads and polkas; harmonic societies; choral
societies; melodists' clubs; glee clubs; madrigal clubs. Here you have
the quiet announcement of a quartett-party; next to it, the
advertisement of one of the Philharmonic Societies--the giants of the
musical world; pianoforte teachers announce one of their series of
classic performances; great instrumental soloists have each a concert
for the special behoof and glorification of the _bénéficiaire_. Mr
So-and-so's grand annual concert jostles Miss So-and-so's annual
benefit concert. There are Monday concerts, and Wednesday concerts,
and Saturday concerts; there are weekly concerts, fortnightly
concerts, and monthly concerts; there are concerts for charities, and
concerts for benefits; there are grand morning concerts, and grand
evening concerts; there are _matinées musicales_, and _soirées
musicales_; there are meetings, and unions, and circles, and
associations--all of them for the performance of some sort of music.
There are musical entertainments by the score: in the City; in the
suburbs; at every institute and hall of science, from one end of
London to the other. One professor has a ballad entertainment; a
second announces a lecture, with musical illustrations; a third