believe that, if at first his resentment contributed to form his convictions, yet these convictions soon become sincere. Jean-Jacques' languishing and sluggard sensibility was bound after all to take more pleasure in this method of expression, a method at once violent and loose. He thought he saw "Nature" in it—and his gossip Diderot had no difficulty in toeing the line with him.
In spite of its radical inconsistency, the manifesto of Jean-Jacques had most unfortunate results. In this world the violence of passion when combined with power of declamation often compensates for a dearth of ideas. This blazing and barbarous invective against French music by a great writer disturbed men's minds. Too many people in Europe were only too glad to run down anything French. Such people cheered for Jean-Jacques and greeted him as a liberator. The worst consequence was that a destructive doubt of the aptitude of Frenchmen for music entered the mind of the French themselves, and largely tended to drive them into excesses of imitation, to lead astray the musicians of our country and weaken in our music the sap and flavour of its native growth. Music is an international language, subject everywhere to the rules of the same syntax; consequently, if there is a domain in which each country can profitably take lessons from other countries and be the richer for it, it is Music. But this acceptance of influence ought not to extend to the absorption of personality, above all when the latter is so magnificent and precious as was the musical personality of France. No one has done so much as Jean-Jacques to make our artists lose the sense of this gift. If we have given ourselves up, not without great loss to our creative vigour, to the
