curiosity, its absolute liberty, and its very French habit of
criticising everything, it is a marvellous barometer, sensitive to all
the hidden currents of thought in the soul of the West, and often
indicating, months in advance, the variations and disturbances of the
artistic and political world.

And this barometer is registering what is happening just now in the
world of music, where a movement has been making itself felt in France
for several years, whose effect other nations--perhaps more musical
nations--will not feel till later. For the nations that have the
strongest artistic traditions are not necessarily those that are likely
to develop a new art. To do that one must have a virgin soil and spirits
untrammelled by a heritage from the past. In 1870 no one had a lighter
heritage to bear than French musicians; for the past had been forgotten,
and such a thing as real musical education did not exist.

The musical weakness of that time was a very curious thing, and has
given many people the impression that France has never been a musical
nation. Historically speaking, nothing could be more wrong. Certainly
there are races more gifted in music than others; but often the seeming
differences of race are really the differences of time; and a nation
appears great or little in its art according to what period of its
history we consider. England was a musical nation until the Revolution
of 1688; France was the greatest musical nation in the sixteenth
century; and the recent publications of M. Henry Expert have given us a
glimpse of the originality and perfection of the Franco-Belgian art
during the Renaissance. But without going back as far as that, we find
that Paris was a very musical town at the time of the Restoration, at
the time of the first performance of Beethoven's symphonies at the
Conservatoire, and the first great works of Berlioz, and the Italian
Opera. In Berlioz's _Memoires_ you can read about the enthusiasm, the
tears, and the feeling, that the performances of Gluck's and Spontini's
operas aroused; and in the same book one sees clearly that this musical
warmth lasted until 1840, after which it died down little by little, and
was succeeded by complete musical apathy in the second Empire--an apathy
from which Berlioz suffered cruelly, so that one may even say he died
crushed by the indifference of the public. At this time Meyerbeer was
reigning at the Opera. This incredible weakening of musical feeling in
F