beneficial to the moral and spiritual estate of the
masses.

Truly indeed has it been said that its universality gives music its high
worth. Mirroring neither your inner life alone nor mine, but the
world's essence, the transfiguration of what seems real, the divine
Ideal, some spark of which glows in every bosom, each individual may
feel in it whatever he is capable of feeling. The soul's language, it
takes up the thread dropped by words and gives utterance to those
refined sentiments and holy aspirations words are inadequate to awaken
or express. Its message is borne from heart to heart, revealing to each
things unseen, according as it is prepared to receive them.

In the Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare made Lorenzo speak to Jessica of
the harmony that is in immortal souls and say that "whilst this muddy
vesture of decay doth grossly close it in we cannot hear it." To refine
this muddy vesture, to render the spirit attentive, to bring light,
sweetness, strength, harmony and beauty into daily life is the central
function of music which, from the cradle to the grave, is man's most
intimate companion.

Richard Wagner devoutly believed it would prepare the way for an
unspoiled, unfettered humanity, illumined by a perception of Truth and
Beauty and united by a bond of sympathy and love. This ideal union is
the goal at which Tolstoi aims in his "What is Art?" He defines art as a
human activity to be enjoyed by all, whose purpose is the transmission
of the most exalted feelings to which men have arisen; but the union he
proposes would have to be consummated by a leveling process. All art
that cannot without preparation reach the uncultured classes is
denounced by him. He is most bitter in his denunciation of Wagner, who
fought for a democratic art, but who wished to attain it by raising the
lowliest of his fellow-creatures to an ever loftier plane of high
thinking and feeling.

According to Tolstoi, art began to degenerate when it separated itself
from religion. There must have been dense mist before the Russian sage's
mental vision when he fancied this separation possible. Art, especially
musical art, is a vital part of religion, and cannot be put asunder from
it. Like thought, music, since the bonds of church and state have been
broken, has spread wide its pinions and soared to hitherto unsuspected
heights. All noble music is sacred.

Amid the marvelous material progress of to-day music is more needed than
ever. Unbu