imagery and
atmosphere of Tennyson's lines--an object which it accomplishes with
triumphant completeness. As a feat of sheer tone-painting one recalls
few things, of a similar scope and purpose, that surpass it in
fitness, concision, and felicity. It displays a power of imaginative
transmutation hitherto undisclosed in MacDowell's writing. Here are
precisely the severe and lonely mood of the opening lines of the poem,
the sense of inaccessible and wind-swept spaces, which Tennyson has so
magnificently and so succinctly conveyed. Here, too, are the far-off,
"wrinkled sea," and the final cataclysmic and sudden descent: yet,
despite the literalism of the close, there is no yielding of artistic
sobriety in the result, for the music has an unassailable dignity. It
remains, even to-day, one of MacDowell's most characteristic and
admirable performances.

Of the "Romance" for 'cello and orchestra (op. 35), the Concert Study
(op. 36), and "Les Orientales" (op. 37),--three _morceaux_ for
piano, after Victor Hugo,--there is no need to speak in detail.
"Perfunctory" is the word which one must use to describe the creative
impulse of which they are the ungrateful legacy--an impulse less
spontaneous, there is reason to believe, than utilitarian. Perhaps
they may most justly be characterised as almost the only instances in
which MacDowell gave heed to the possibility of a reward not primarily
and exclusively artistic. They are sentimental and unleavened, and
they are far from worthy of his gifts, though they are not without a
certain rather inexpensive charm.

[Illustration: A WINTER VIEW OF THE PETERBORO HOUSE]

The "Marionettes" of op. 38 are in a wholly different case. Published
first in 1888, the year of MacDowell's return to America, they were
afterward extensively revised, and now appear under a radically
different guise. In its present form, the group comprises six _genre_
studies--"Soubrette," "Lover," "Witch," "Clown," "Villain,"
"Sweetheart"--besides two additions: a "Prologue" and "Epilogue." Here
MacDowell is in one of his happiest moods. It was a fortunate and
charming conceit which prompted the plan of the series, with its
half-playful, half-ironic, yet lurkingly poetic suggestions; for in
spite of the mood of bantering gaiety which placed the pieces in such
mocking juxtaposition, there is, throughout, an undertone of grave and
meditative tenderness which it is one of the peculiar properties of
MacDowell's art to com