as pedantic a gesture as he can command, and his talents in this direction are considerable, he lays out his weights and measures, always qualifying, almost always. Buts, ifs, and in spite ofs cumber his operose paragraphs. No music is perfect; none is imperfect. With this axiom, liberally disregarded by more lively writers, for a text, he proceeds to tell us that the allegro of the new fantasia is admirable in form, but that the themes, perhaps, do not justify such elaborate treatment. He emphasizes history; he leans on handbooks; musty facts are dragged in palestrically for their own sake alone. His manner is formidable, exegetical, eupeptic, a dynamic, asthenic. He clings to cliché: "The composition smells of the midnight oil," etc., etc.
These two varieties of critics are only too actually with us on every side, not only in New York and Boston, but in London, Paris, and Berlin as well. They always have been and they always will be with us. They are one of the principal causes for the profound and unfortunate indifference, nay contempt, with which music (as an art) is regarded by the man who may take an enormous amount of pleasure out of reading books or looking at pictures. Instead of awakening an interest in the greatest and most mysterious of the arts, these obstinate fellows have acted as direct agents in the perpetuation of the
