ciation may be sought.

[Sidenote: _Talent in listening._]

The capacity properly to listen to music is better proof of musical
talent in the listener than skill to play upon an instrument or
ability to sing acceptably when unaccompanied by that capacity. It
makes more for that gentleness and refinement of emotion, thought, and
action which, in the highest sense of the term, it is the province of
music to promote. And it is a much rarer accomplishment. I cannot
conceive anything more pitiful than the spectacle of men and women
perched on a fair observation point exclaiming rapturously at the
loveliness of mead and valley, their eyes melting involuntarily in
tenderness at the sight of moss-carpeted slopes and rocks and peaceful
wood, or dilating in reverent wonder at mountain magnificence, and
then learning from their exclamations that, as a matter of fact, they
are unable to distinguish between rock and tree, field and forest,
earth and sky; between the dark-browns of the storm-scarred rock, the
greens of the foliage, and the blues of the sky.

[Sidenote: _Ill equipped listeners._]

Yet in the realm of another sense, in the contemplation of beauties
more ethereal and evanescent than those of nature, such is the
experience which in my capacity as a writer for newspapers I have made
for many years. A party of people blind to form and color cannot be
said to be well equipped for a Swiss journey, though loaded down with
alpenstocks and Baedekers; yet the spectacle of such a party on the
top of the Rigi is no more pitiful and anomalous than that presented
by the majority of the hearers in our concert-rooms. They are there to
adventure a journey into a realm whose beauties do not disclose
themselves to the senses alone, but whose perception requires a
co-operation of all the finer faculties; yet of this they seem to know
nothing, and even of that sense to which the first appeal is made it
may be said with profound truth that "hearing they hear not, neither
do they understand."

[Sidenote: _Popular ignorance of music._]

Of all the arts, music is practised most and thought about least. Why
this should be the case may be explained on several grounds. A sweet
mystery enshrouds the nature of music. Its material part is subtle and
elusive. To master it on its technical side alone costs a vast
expenditure of time, patience, and industry. But since it is, in one
manifestation or another, the most popular of the arts, and one