O

NE of the most characteristic stories we have of Thoreau, that wonderfully close and poetic observer of nature, is told by a friend who accompanied him on one of his long walks about Concord. The two men fell to talking of those rude arrow-heads, chopped from stone, which are almost the only relics now to be found of the Indian tribes that used to hunt in that region; and Thoreau's companion expressed his surprise that any one could ever see, in those wide fields around them, such mere chips of quartz. "Here is one now,” replied Thoreau, stooping and picking one up at his friend's very feet.

Thoreau was justly proud of his keen power of observation, and used to explain it by saying that he knew what to look for. Nature," he writes in one of his books, "does not cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate-not a grain more. There is no power to see in the eye itself," he insists, any more than in any other jelly. We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads." And later in the same passage he cries: " Why, it takes a sharpshooter to bring down even such trivial game as snipes and woodcocks; he must take very particular aim and know what he is aiming at. . . . And so is it with him that shoots at beauty; though he wait till the sky falls, he will not bag any if he does not already know its seasons and haunts, and the color of its wing."

What is here so well said of the eye is equally true of the ear. As there is indeed no power to see in the eye itself, so there is no power to hear in the ear itself; and we have all read of those that "have eyes and see not, and ears and hear not." We cannot see until we know what to. look for; we cannot hear until we learn how to listen. Yet how few people realize what care and study, what love and enthusiasm, are needed to make a good

listener, especially to that rarest, subtlest form of sound-music! How many go out to shoot that kind of beauty without the vaguest idea of its “ seasons and haunts, and the color of its wing," and naturally come back empty-handed!

We often hear people say, for example, that they are fond of "popular music, but that what they call "classical music is too dry" and "heavy "' for them. They say this complacently, as if it were entirely the fault of the music, and their state of mind couldn't possibly have anything to do with it. Yet the reason for their preference is that while their ears can catch the commonplace swing of the rollicking march tune or the swaying waltz, they are not yet trained to seize the more delicate beauty of a melody by Schumann or Chopin. Let them cultivate their powers of hearing by listening with their minds as well as their ears, and these rarer, finer beauties will charm them more each day, while the old favorites will in the same proportion grow to seem more and more noisy, meaningless, and stale.

There is, to be sure, nothing to be ashamed of in being fond of the "popular" tunes, provided we admit that there may be beauties in the other things that we do not yet see. Indeed, the love of a good, vigorous march, or of a graceful waltz tune, or of a tender love song is an excellent foundation for a fine taste in music. It is genuine and honest, at any rate, and much more promising than the make-believe exquisiteness of those who shudder at a discord and close their ears as if in agony when they hear a hurdygurdy. But it is only a foundation, and if we would build on it a love of the best we must keep open minds and attentive ears. There is no use in refining one's tastes if they are not sincere to begin with; but if they are sincere, it is very desirable that they should be cultivated.

Another way in which people unconsciously confess themselves poor listeners is in preferring operas and oratorios to sym

phonies and quartets, as so many of the half-musical do. They are so little trained in listening to music for itself that they like to have words to tell them "what it is all about." In opera they have also the scenery and the actors to look at; and these not only help to explain what is going on, but give them something on which to focus their wandering attention. And so they decide that opera is a higher form of art than instrumental or 'pure" music, as it is called, because they cannot follow the latter. But any one who can follow it knows that the truth is just the other way about. The better one comes to understand music the more clearly one sees that it has its own meaning, quite independent of words, and that words actually interfere with this meaning, by distracting one's attention from it. The true music-lover loves a symphony even better than an opera.

It is clear, then, that the quality of musical enjoyment depends quite as much on the listener as on the music. Indeed, music can exist only when three persons work together for it in sympathy. First, there is the composer, who must make his piece as beautiful as he can, no matter how many years of study and hard work that may require. Then there is the performer, who must unselfishly try to give the composer's meaning, resisting the temptation to show himself off or to "interpret" something that is not there. And, third, and just as important as either of the others, there is the listener, who, instead of sitting lazily and enjoying what is easiest to understand, must be willing to do his share by really attending, and thinking, and trying to appreciate the best.

Now, as music appeals to us in a variety of ways, some of it especially in one way and some in another, we may find it helpful to take up these different kinds of appeal one by one, and study each with

some care.

Why is it, to begin with, that we so much prefer a clear, mellow voice to a hoarse, cracked one, or the tone of a fine old Italian violin to that of a cheap fiddle? They may both sing or play the same tune, yet there is a great difference in the pleasure they give us. The sound of a good tone pleases our ear as much as a bit of brightly colored ribbon pleases our

eye, or a piece of velvet our sense of touch. This pleasure that clear, mellow, rich tones gives our sense of hearing is the first and the simplest appeal that music can make to us. Even animals like to hear musical sounds, and some of them dislike discords and rough noises. As this appeal of music is to our sense of hearing only, and not to our minds or feelings, we shall call it the “ appeal of music; it is in one sense the most primitive of all the appeals, and yet it is not safely to be neglected even by the greatest composer.

sensuous

But we have all heard, sometimes, melodies sung by poor, thin voices, or played on cracked old pianos, that nevertheless charmed us by their own beauty. With very little of the appeal to the sense of hearing, they yet gave us delight. What, then, was their fascination, and to what part of us did it appeal? It was a beauty of shape, and it appealed to our minds. An analogy will make this clear.

Here are two vases. One is of finest porcelain, a translucent blue white, with all sorts of delicate reflections of the light playing on its surface; but it is too short for its width; it bulges out in awkward shoulders, and all its outline is graceless and without elegance. The other is of common crockery ware-but how beautifully slender and symmetrical! How the slight flare of the mouth is echoed in the gentle curve of the body! How the outline carries your eye from point to point, never shocking it with a sudden angle or an unwelcome curve! Of the two vases, one of which has beauty of color and the other beauty of form, a cultivated taste would choose the second without a moment's hesitation.

Well, so it is with melodies. One, played on the finest violin, leaves us unmoved because its shape is ugly-its curves are heavy, there is no elastic, constantly changing life in it. Another has such a rare and delicate shape, each rise and fall harmonizes so perfectly with all the others, and the whole tune, while quite natural and simple, is so individual, so different from any other, that even a hurdy-gurdy cannot wholly spoil it.

This value of shapeliness in music cannot be felt by the ear alone, because all that the ear can get is single sensations, now

one and now another, as moment follows moment. In order to feel all these sensations in relation to each other, making up a melody of definite shape, we have to use our minds; it is not enough merely to hear, we must "perceive" the form or shape of what we hear. The Greeks had a word for this kind of perceiving, from which we get our word "æsthetic," which means "having to do with beauty, or the perception of beauty," and which we may apply to this second kind of musical value. The aesthetic appeal of music, then, is the appeal it makes to us through its shapeliness or beauty, through all those inter-relations of its parts which make up musical form.

Then, in the third place, there is the appeal which music makes to our feelings or emotions; one piece makes us sad or wistful, another is glad, or merry, or exultant, another is noble or sublime; and so important is this emotional value of music, by which it expresses our inmost feelings, that we often hear the saying, "Music is the language of the emotions." The most generally accepted theory as to this expressive power of music is that so ably expounded by Sir Hubert Parry in his "The Evolution of the Art of Music," by which it is ascribed to the arousal in the hearer, by its suggestions, through rhythm and melody, of bodily motions and vocal sounds, of the emotions of which such motions and sounds are the natural expression, as may be seen in children and savages. But it is important for us to remember that musical expression never rises to any high poignancy unless it be transfigured by musical beauty-the third of our " appeals " is very largely dependent on the second. As Edmund Gurney in his "The Power of Sound" wittily puts it, "If I were inspired to bravery in battle by music, it would not be because I perceived it to be martial, but because I perceived it to be beautiful-in other words, because it gave me an indefinable sense of exhilaration; there is a great deal of martial music which, from its inherent dullness and triteness, would make me much more inclined to run away."

Three different appeals may, then, be discerned in a work of musical art: the sensuous appeal to the ear, the aesthetic appeal to the mind or intelligence, and

the expressive appeal to the emotions. "There is in music," says the French composer Saint-Saëns, "something which traverses the ear as a door, the mind as a vestibule, and which goes yet farther."

"But what is the need," the reader may ask, "of all this trouble about music? Is it not meant to be enjoyed, rather than worked and worried over? Why should I not enjoy the music I like, and let the rest go?" This way of looking at music as merely an entertainment is very common, and has brought upon it much contempt, both from the general public and from artists in other spheres. Argument in such matters is of little avail, but an anecdote of one of the greatest of all composers may at least suggest that another view is possible.

He

The last ten years of his short life Mozart spent in the great, pleasure-loving city of Vienna, in extreme poverty. had to earn what he could by playing at concerts and giving piano lessons, and could make hardly anything out of what he wrote, because people didn't understand it and wouldn't buy it. He was so poor that sometimes he could not get food, or even coal in winter, and one cold morning he and his wife were found by a friend who went to call on them, waltzing together to keep warm. And yet, when his publisher said to him, "Write in a more easy, popular style, or I will not print a note or give you a cent," he replied, "Then, my good sir, I have only to resign myself and die of hunger."

Now if Mozart could willingly face starvation rather than lower his ideal of what good music should be, and if not only he, but Bach and Beethoven and Schubert and Schumann and Wagner, and scores of others, could even glory to be poor and unknown and overworked, for the sake of making music, ought not we, their artistic heirs, to be glad to take some trouble in order to appreciate it?

And one thing more. It is not only for our own pleasure, nor even for our own improvement, that we are working. Music means to us not only a privilege but a responsibility, since we are the men and women who help to decide what kind of music we shall have, who support with our money and our influence the operas and concerts, and the work of our com

posers. Shall we, then, give the singer who can touch the highest note a fortune and let the true singer of our joys and sorrows starve ? Shall we applaud the pianist with the liveliest fingers and let him who devotes himself to beauty go unheard? Shall we encourage the empty

music of the street rather than the music in which deep feeling and a noble sense of beauty are embodied? Or shall we do our part toward making our country as great in music, and in the other arts too, as it already is in business, science, and invention?

A HITHERTO

T

HERE is at this moment no public statue of Charles Lamb. Probably there never will be. But if it ever came about that enough old-fashioned people put down their money in order that the Temple Gardens might be enriched by some such a figure as the Carlyle at Chelsea, the end could be gained by a far simpler means than usual, since there happens to be in existence, easily available for enlargement (thus saving a sculptor's fees), a minute contemporary statuette of the essayist, which, if not from life (as it very likely was), is yet perfectly suited for commemorative purposes.

This statuette is, as the accompanying reproductions show, a work of much charm; and it suggests a natural and characteristic pose. I dare say that Lamb is too tidy, a shade too precise; but statuettes have that fault. Rodin, of course, would ruffle his hair and see that his coat did not fit. But Rodin is beyond us, even if, in this connection, we wanted him. Any sculptor, I fear, is beyond us; for those to whom Lamb's fame is actually dear are few and modest in possessions. That is why the discovery of this little figure seems to be so opportune. For the first and I hope last time in my life, I am glad to think that no artist need be employed.

The statuette, from which the accompanying photographs are taken, is in the Willett Collection of Pottery and Porcelain in the Brighton Museum. There may be replicas, but I have not yet heard of any. In the catalogue it is thus mentioned : Statuette. Biscuit porcelain. Charles Lamb (1775-1834). H. 10 in. Derby. c. 1830.

My own feeling is that 1830 is not quite the period. The nearest thing to it is Wageman's portrait of 1824 or 1825. In that, which is full face, one loses some of the aquilinity of the nose, but it has similar hair (but rougher) and the same cut of clothes (but less perfect). Brook Pulham's etched caricature of 1825 makes the hair unkempt and straight-surely an errorbut he gives the nose much of our sculptor's aquilinity. Meyer, who painted Lamb in 1826, softens the features. Maclise, who corroborates costume and physical proportions, came later, and he also made the hair much less curly. If the sculptor did not model from life, then I think he probably went to Wageman's drawing for his groundwork, with perhaps hints from a friend.

As to who this sculptor was I have a note from Mr. Read, of the British Museum. "It seems probable," he writes, "that it was modeled (assuming it to be Derby biscuit and not Parian, a later thing) by Mr. Samuel Keys [the younger], who worked at Derby modeling figures of theatrical folk until 1830. He then left Derby for the Potteries."

It may be held as an argument against the "life" theory that had Lamb in his days of leisure towards the end ("circa