ille, Lagoanere, Corneille, Gailhard, and
Carre; but none of them achieved any success. At the moment, a new
attempt is being made; and this time the thing seems to show every sign
of being a success.

But whatever may be the educational value of the theatre and concerts,
they are not complete enough in themselves for the people. To make their
influence deep and enduring it must be combined with teaching. Music, no
less than every other expression of thought, has no use for the
illiterate.

So in this case there was everything to be done. There was no other
popular teaching but that of the numerous Galin-Paris-Cheve schools.
These schools have rendered great service, and are continuing to render
it; but their simplified methods are not without drawbacks and gaps.
Their purpose is to teach the people a musical language different from
that of cultured people; and although it may not be as difficult as is
supposed to go from a knowledge of the one to a knowledge of the other,
it is always wrong to raise up a fresh barrier--however small it
is--between the cultured people and the other people, who in our own
country are already too widely separated.

And besides, it is not enough to know one's letters; one must also have
books to read. What books have the people had?--so far songs sung at the
cafe concerts and the stupid repertoires of choral societies. The
folk-song had practically disappeared, and was not yet ready for
re-birth; for the populace, even more readily than the cultured people,
are inclined to blush at anything which suggests "popularity."[243]

[Footnote 243: M. Maurice Buchor relates an anecdote which typifies what
I mean. "I begged the conductor of a good men's choral society," he
says, "to have one of Haendel's choruses sung. But he seemed to hesitate.
I had made the suggestion tentatively, and then tried to enlarge on the
sincerity and breadth of its musical idea. 'Ah, very good,' he said, 'if
you really want to hear it, it is easily done; but I was afraid that
perhaps it was rather too popular.'" (_Poeme de la Vie Humaine_:
Introduction to the Second Series, 1905.) One may add to this the words
of a professor of singing in a primary school for Higher Education in
Paris: "Folk-music--well, it is very good for the provinces." (Quoted by
Buchor in the Introduction to the Second Series of the _Poeme_, 1902.)]

It is nearly twenty-five years since M. Bourgault-Ducoudray, who was one
of the people who fos