ery one. To be able
to drum off fifty pieces in an imperfect manner does not justify the
expectation that the fifty-first piece will be learned more easily or
better; but to attain a perfect mastery of four or five pieces gives a
standard for the rest.

In this way, and by mechanical studies, such as I have begun with Emily,
the greatest ease in reading at sight is gradually developed, in which
all my pupils excel, when they have remained long enough under my
instruction, and in which my daughters are pre-eminent. But for this it
is necessary to continue to study single pieces, industriously and
artistically, and with great exactness; for otherwise the practice of
reading at sight, which often amounts to a passion, leads very soon to
slovenliness in piano-playing and to more or less vulgar machine-music.

MRS. SOLID. I am more and more convinced that a style of instruction
which is illogical, intermittent, superficial, and without method, can
lead to no good result, or at least to nothing satisfactory, even with
extraordinary talents; and that the unsound and eccentric manifestations
and caricatures of art, which cause the present false and deplorable
condition of piano-playing, are the consequence of such a prevalent mode
of instruction.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE PEDAL.

I have just returned exhausted and annihilated from a concert, where I
have been hearing the piano pounded. Two grand bravoura movements have
been thundered off, with the pedal continually raised; and then were
suddenly succeeded by a soft murmuring passage, during which the
thirteen convulsed and quivering bass notes of the _fortissimo_ were all
the time resounding. It was only by the aid of the concert programme
that my tortured ears could arrive at the conclusion that this confusion
of tones was meant to represent two pieces by Doehler and Thalberg.

Cruel fate that invented the pedal! I mean the pedal which raises the
dampers on the piano. A grand acquisition, indeed, for modern times!
Good heavens! Our piano performers must have lost their sense of
hearing! What is all this growling and buzzing? Alas, it is only the
groaning of the wretched piano-forte, upon which one of the modern
_virtuosos_, with a heavy beard and long hanging locks, whose hearing
has deserted him, is blustering away on a bravoura piece, with the pedal
incessantly raised,--with inward satisfaction and vain self-assertion!
Truly time brings into use a great deal that is