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of music are thus divided very sharply into two classes. There is the genuine artist who works and studies hard, seeking always to perfect himself in his particular branch of music; a singer or a player perhaps, who finds himself unable to live on the engagements that he can get as a performer. There is

no help for such a one, except in teaching; not the teaching of geniuses, but of any one who will come often far removed from genius. There is no sadder thing in the world than to see some really artistic spirit gradually crushed and wearied by the drudgery of teaching, and its bright wings, that aspired to mount to the sun, soiled with the dust of the earth in the struggle for an actual living. To those genuinely artistic spirits, thoroughly sound musicians perhaps, but without the superlativeness of voice or technique which alone to-day commands a wide hearing, the modern world is no friendly place, and modern life is no easy condition. Such people necessarily live completely out of harmony with the world about them. Their ambition is the attainment of perfection, and perfection is a luxury which they are neither allowed to attain themselves, nor assist others to the attainment of. If they have a brilliant pupil, he or she soon passes into other hands; the dull ones require results of some kind in the shortest possible time, and with the least possible expenditure of money; to be taught how to get through a song or pianoforte piece, in a way that will secure the admiration of their uncritical friends, is all they want. And in the deadly struggle for life, the artist is again and again forced down into the prosecution of this melancholy business, until too often his faith in himself, and even in his art, is lost, and he becomes a mere drudge in the economic service. In such a life it can hardly be said that music is in harmony with modern conditions.

IV.

Its

I could multiply instances of this kind to any extent, and in a way rather depressing to those who love and study music for itself; but they would only tend to strengthen and support my theory, that all attempts to change the character of music with the changed character of our age; all attempts to force it from what it is into something that it is not and cannot be; all efforts to turn an artistic and spiritual thing into an economic and commercial thing; in a word, all efforts to make music move with the times, are bound to end in failure. What place then has music in our modern life? I believe that it has a very real place and use with us to-day. And the great use of music in modern life, it seems to me, may be expressed in a paradox. use in modern life is as a means of escape from modern life. Its value to us lies, not in its likeness to the conditions around us, but in its difference from them; not in its correspondence with our everyday life, but in its contrast to it. It is a life-belt which will preserve those who carry it from altogether sinking in the welter of sordid material conditions about them; it is a fiery chariot that will catch us up out of cares and struggles here, and bear us to a world of serene and exalted things; that may carry us from turmoil into peace, and from earth to heaven. Poetry and music, as Hector Berlioz said, are the two wings of the soul; and as it has in all times been re garded as a means of rising beyond the limitations of material conditions into the free world of the spirit, so, more truly to-day than ever, it may still be regarded. And to those who have chosen music as the main work and study of their lives, and who are not infrequently confronted with these very questions of its apparent incompatibility with the general run of the world's thought and interest to-day, I

cannot help feeling that it will be a great strength, a great consolation, and a great encouragement, if they will think of music in this way, as having nothing whatever to do with the material interests and affairs of mankind, but as belonging to another world, another dimension, another element. How often at sea is one not awed and confounded, if one's eye is raised no higher than the horizon, by the tumult and desolation of the waters, the busy, tiresome, laborious activities of the ship, the grinding and commotion, the throbbing and pulsing, the humming of winds, and roar and crashing of waves. Yet raise your eyes above the salt wilderness of water, above the laboring ship, above the swinging mastheads, and there, visibly above you, is a world of peace, unbroken and eternal, where stars are shining quietly, and whither the tumults of the sea do not reach. And those of us with the cultivation and perception to appreciate great music have always close at hand just such another world, another element in which our spirits may refresh themselves. There never was a time when we more needed such an escape; there never was a time when material things were so pressing; when the clamor and tumult of the world was so outrageous; when the things of life itself were so deafening as to dull our ears to all the finer sounds. We need music more than ever in the world today, and the mission of those who cultivate it is a higher and more sacred mission than ever it was. It is no longer for the mere adornment and elegance of life that they labor, but for spiritual life itself; it is not to give the musical spirit more balmy airs to breathe, but for its very breath they are fighting.

It goes without saying that there are certain kinds of music that appeal to us more easily to-day than other kinds. It is always easy to listen to Wagner

or Chopin, because there is in all their music a trace of that emotional fever that is never far below the surface of our modern life; but it is often hard to get into the necessary frame of mind to be able to enjoy the music of Beethoven or Mozart. We must all have been aware of experiencing this difficulty of going into a concert-room, and looking forward to hearing a favorite symphony, and finding when it came to be played that it had nothing to say to us, that we were not in the mood for it, that we were listening to its notes without really hearing it. All very serious music requires an atmosphere, a stimmung to be established, before it can really come to life, and this atmosphere is one which it is increasingly hard to establish, in proportion as it becomes farther and farther removed from the atmosphere in which we live our lives. All chamber music needs it; for example, how often is one really in the mood to appreciate or even enjoy a Beethoven quartette? Such things have really no part with our everyday life; they belong to a region of things which we must deliberately enter into if we are to appreciate or enjoy them, and that region is very far from the region which we inhabit during the greater part of our waking lives. In a simpler age it lay near at hand, and from the daily life of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was but a step into that world, now so spiritually removed from us. Between the life of London to-day, with its high pressure, its domination by money, its fierce battles, the endless struggle for life that is going on in it, the endless grim effort to keep a foothold at all amid its jostling crowds, the tremendous hurrying tide and torrent of activity that roars for ever in our ears-ah! between that and the quiet little world of candle-light in a home in some German country town, two hundred years ago, what a contrast! Could we but open

the windows of our mental vision and see the little family group surrounding the open scores and steeping themselves in the joy and understanding of deep and true music, what peace and refreshment might we not find!

Well, it is to some extent possible for us to do it still; that world lies still within our reach, although the journey to it becomes longer and longer every day. It is very hard for the individual to reach it alone. The atmosphere that I have spoken of may be, and is, still established where a number of people, who really care for music, gather together and work at it. Such things as quartette-parties and singing-societies, even though the standard of performance which they attain may not be a very high one, are invaluable aids to the cultivation of music in our life to-day. One of the strongest and healthiest branches of English music is to be found in the brass bands of the towns and villages of England. And why? Just because they involve the association of people, the meeting together with the one purpose of working at and studying music, and consequently, that temporary escape from ordinary life, which I have emphasized as being the most valuable thing that music can give us to-day.

And I would strongly urge, as the sum of what I have been trying to say

The English Review.

about the place of music in modern life, that the thing to be striven for, and worked for to-day, is the cultivation of a musical atmosphere. It is less important to-day that we should produce new music, than that we should cultivate an atmosphere in which music that has already been produced can be heard and enjoyed. That really is the thing that is in danger to-day. There is no danger that we shall lose our technical accomplishments, for there never was an age when technique was in such a high state of perfection as it is to-day. Be sure that we shall never lack performers, never lack producers of music. What we may come to lack is listeners-not because the world shall have grown weary of music, or will come to need it any the less, but because in the crowded material conditions of modern life the atmosphere in which people can listen at all may become less and less easy of attainment. And the establishment of that atmosphere, whenever and wherever it is possible, is the best service that we can render music to-day; that we may preserve it, not as part of our modern life, but as a part of that greater life which is not ancient or modern, but universal and eternal, into which our spirits may escape in hours of heaviness or oppression here.

Filson Foung.

CHARLIE OVER THE WATER. BY JANE H. FINDLATER.

V.

The train for Cypress Creek came up at last.

"We will soon be reaching now, mother," Hector said, feeling that their troubles were nearly over, as he helped her once more into the car. It was filled with a motley company, and our travellers retreated to their seats and watched their fellow-passengers in sur

prise. A lot of foreign emigrants filled some of the seats, and another group were playing cards.

"What will they be doing with the bits of pictures?" the Widow whispered to her grandson.

"These'll be playing-cards, mother," he said, having learned as much as that (and a little more) on board ship. He would have liked, indeed, to join the

game; but his grandmother's horrified exclamation put an end to that. She had never seen a card in her life, and knew of them only as some mysterious evil.

"Eh, Hector, and on the Lord's Day!" she sighed. Her Sabbatarian views were getting many a shock just now. Hector then began to look out at the window. They were crossing the Mississippi, and the rushing, tawny flood of the great river filled him with delight. They came after that into a strange region, where the train seemed to run through shallow lakes; water was round and round them, with great cypress-trees rising out of the swamps. Then the swamps seemed to dry up again, and they went through forests. There were clearings here, and white men's houses, easily distinguishable from the deplorable negro cabins.

It was about two o'clock now, and the fervid heat of the afternoon sun struck in through the windows of the car. Would the journey never end? Even Hector's interest began to flag; and as for the Widow, she felt as if she were in a bad dream-a dream of endless clanking noise and dust and heat, and wild strange faces all round her.

She leant back and closed her eyes, and her mind travelled across the weary leagues that lay now between her and home. As clear as day she saw the cottage, its brown thatched roof dripping in the rain, the blue peat-smoke curling up from the chimney.

With a quick movement she felt in her pocket for the key-the blessed keyand clutched it fast: it seemed to her a charm, a pledge, something to hold on to when everything round her was unreal. Then in her utter weariness she dozed again, and another hour was got through. Three o'clock-they had lost all sense of time, and had no watch to set them right. The train stopped once or twice, and people got out and

came in. Each time Hector started up, asking if this was Cypress Creek, and always was told "Not yet." They might have been travelling on into Eternity-far, far beyond the limits of Time... Hector, too, fell asleep, and was wakened by a tap on his shoulder and the voice of the negro porter speaking thrilling words:

"Now, then, sah! Cypress Creekstep lively."

Hector dragged himself up out of the abyss of sleep, and essayed to waken his grandmother, who had again been wrapped in slumber. She woke with

a start.

"Och, Hector, I was after dreaming of a cruel long journey I was taking!" she cried. She sat up, blinking her tired eyes. Could it be she found herself in her own chair at home? Alas! there were only the horrible strange faces round her, some of them laughing at what she had said, and Hector calling to her to be quick and get out of the train, for they had reached Cypress Creek at last!

They seemed to have arrived at the very world's end-just a cluster of wooden houses set down on the edge of the forest; the railway track running through this pretence at a village, and two or three negroes and whites loitering about to look at the train.

With some difficulty the Widow was hoisted out of the car. She found herself standing on the solid ground once more, but dazed with fatigue and blinded by the blaze of the afternoon sun as it struck across her dim old eyes. Groping, with her hands held out before her as she went, she stumbled forward. A tall man was coming towards her.

"Eh, mother, it's yourself!" he cried. with that quite indescribable note of the exile's voice in his cry. She ran forward-yes, ran, as if those old limbs had suddenly become young again--and fell into his outstretched arms.

"Och, och, it's Charlie-it's Charlie!" In a moment she had forgotten everything-the unutterable strangeness of her surroundings, the weary sea and land that she had crossed: she had got to Charlie at last, her dim eyes had seen him again, her dull ears heard his voice.

People at the window of the car looked out and smiled at the meeting -at the funny-looking old woman in her tartan shawl holding on to the big man; but some of them had tears in their eyes, too-for with most of them partings had been commoner than such meetings.

During the first few days of their stay at Cypress Creek Hector lived in hourly expectation that his fraud about the letter would be discovered. But whether it was that his grandmother had got so confused by all she had gone through that she forgot about the letter, or whatever it was, nothing happened, and very soon Hector began to forget the matter himself. The new life that opened round him now appeared wonderfully vivid and interest ing. For here at "MacLean's Place," as the neighbors called Charlie's clearing, there was work enough and to spare, and Hector rejoiced in this. Work-the men of the Old World didn't know the meaning of the word! In comparison with what the settlers here got through in a day, the labors of men at home seemed like the scratchings of mice.

Nature was being conquered and held by the throat, as it were, all the time; the land had been slowly and painfully reclaimed from the forest inch by inch; the great trees fired, with reckless waste of timber, and then their roots dug and torn out of the soil to make room for crops. All round about the clearing Hector watched the same sort of thing going on. Men toiled like cattle to win this rich land for themselves

and their children. An incessant war it was, splendid and triumphant, where man was always the victor in the end, and Nature, at last subdued, obediently yielded up her fruits into the hands of her conqueror.

To join in the battle-what more would any man ask? Hector wondered. His spirit kindled to the work. It was new and exciting, often dangerous, always difficult! but work for men. He looked back with a blessed sense of escape at the little stony croft on the island where he had worked so long. What child's play it had been! No adventures, no risks-above all, no prizes to win: just picking away at the barren soil, reaping the thin little crops, and scraping the ground once more, over and over again. And now he had escaped from it all. He thought contemptuously of the long idleness of the crofter's winter, and laughed with glee to have said good-bye to it for ever. You may be sure that a lad with Hector's views was fully appreciated by his uncle. It was not easy to get "help" enough for all the work; the negroes were lazy and difficult to manage, and white labor was scarce. No wonder, then, that Hector found himself in great request. He toiled late and early, getting burnt almost black by the sun, growing taller and stronger, and enjoying himself mightily.

There was a curious, not altogether desirable, population round Cypress Creek. All nations and peoples and tongues were there, and among these, too, a large sprinkling of the descendants of the convicts who had been sent out to the plantations in old days. These you could distinguish from the other settlers by their very air; there seemed to be a streak of untameable wildness somewhere in them-it sparkled in their hard defiant eyes, and lurked at the corners of their thin lips. A strange composite society it was al

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