learned ingenuity, sound work, it yet does not appear up to now to realise the idea or the dream that we cherish of the true song of our race. Let us suppose that on hearing a choir piece of Josquin des Près or Jeannequin, a comic opera of Grétry or Monsigny, a tragedy or ballet of Rameau, an instrumental piece by Daquin or Couperin, we find occasion to ask ourselves what has become of that health and vigour, that simple charm, that liveliness of mind and senses, that youth and enthusiasm, tenderness and simplicity of heart; and to ask on the other hand why there should be this persistent odour of melancholy, this painful and somewhat numbing complexity of sentiment, this thrill of nervosity, these checks and hesitations of the lyric outpouring. Let us suppose, I say, that there are these gaps, these shadows on the picture. Are we to blame our musicians themselves for them? Are we to put these things down to their peculiar formation or to the fact of some unlucky influence, of an artistic or professional kind, that it has been their lot to undergo? Certainly not. We must seek a more general cause. And where shall we find it if not in the present and passing condition of French sensibility and French character, in the state of national life?
Art is the child of its time. The time that is being brought to a close by the present terrible events was for our country a time of moral and civil depression, little suited to strong and abundant life of the soul, to energy of imagination. These events lead us, nay force us, to hope for better days. The French race has proved on the field of battle and in the trench that in the midst of the long and slow testing of the time before the war, and beneath its apparent lethargy,
