away from us under some plausible pretext or other. Well, then, it
strikes me that a great deal might be done to promote the more
refined pleasures of life among our rural population. I hope we
shall live to see many of Hullah's pupils playing an important part
in this way. Of course, the foundation for these things may best be
laid at schools; and is being laid in some places, I am happy to
say.

Ellesmere. Humph, music, sing-song!

Milverton. Don't you observe, Dunsford, that when Ellesmere wants
to attack us, and does not exactly see how, he mutters to himself
sarcastically, sneering himself up, as it were, to the attack.

Ellesmere. You and Dunsford are both wild for music, from barrel-
organs upwards.

Milverton. I confess to liking the humblest attempts at melody.

Dunsford. I feel as Sir Thomas Browne tells us he felt, that "even
that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another
mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound
contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of
divinity more than the ear discovers; it is an hieroglyphical and
shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God: such a
melody to the ear as the whole world well understood, would afford
the understanding."

Milverton. Apropos of music in country places, when I was going
about last year in the neighbouring county, I saw such a pretty