of the Transcendental epoch, although none would have more promptly
disclaimed any taint of Transcendentalism than the excellent officers of
the Boston Academy of Music. The building itself, the Odeon, was the old
Federal Street Theatre, and had its interesting associations.... To all
there was now added, in the memory of the happy hearers, the association
of the symphony concerts.

"As the last sounds died away, the group of Brook Farmers, who had ventured
from the Arcadia of co-operation into the Gehenna of competition, gathered
up their unsoiled garments and departed. Out of the city, along the bare
Tremont road, through green Roxbury and bowery Jamaica Plain, into the
deeper and lonelier country, they trudged on, chatting and laughing and
singing, sharing the enthusiasm of Dwight, and unconsciously taught by him
that the evening had been greater than they knew. Brook Farm has long
since vanished. The bare Tremont road is bare no longer. Green Roxbury and
Jamaica Plain are almost city rather than suburbs. From the symphony
concerts dates much of the musical taste and cultivation of Boston. The
old Odeon is replaced by the stately Music Hall. The _Journal of Music_,
which sprang from the impulse of those days, now, after a generation, is
suspended; nor need we speculate why musical Boston, which demands the
Passion music of Bach, permits a journal of such character to expire. Amid
all these changes and disappearances two things have steadily
increased--the higher musical taste of the country, and the good name of
the critic whose work has most contributed to direct and elevate it. If,
as he says, it is sad that the little bark which the sympathetic
encouragement of a few has kept afloat so long goes down before reaching
the end of its thirtieth annual voyage, it does not take down with it the
name and fame of its editor, which have secured their place in the history
of music in America."