ng that the people are the elemental power
that Hiller says they are, who shall save them from the changeableness
and instability which they show with relation to music and her
votaries? Who shall bid the restless waves be still? We, in America,
are a new people, a vast hotch-potch of varied and contradictory
elements. We are engaged in conquering a continent; employed in a mad
scramble for material things; we give feverish hours to win the
comfort for our bodies that we take only seconds to enjoy; the moments
which we steal from our labors we give grudgingly to relaxation, and
that this relaxation may come quickly we ask that the agents which
produce it shall appeal violently to the faculties which are most
easily reached. Under these circumstances whence are to come the
intellectual poise, the refined taste, the quick and sure power of
analysis which must precede a correct estimate of the value of a
composition or its performance?

"A taste or judgment," said Shaftesbury, "does not come
ready formed with us into this world. Whatever principles or
materials of this kind we may possibly bring with us, a
legitimate and just taste can neither be begotten, made,
conceived, or produced without the antecedent labor and
pains of criticism."

[Sidenote: _Comparative qualifications of critic and public._]

Grant that this antecedent criticism is the province of the critic and
that he approaches even remotely a fulfilment of his mission in this
regard, and who shall venture to question the value and the need of
criticism to the promotion of public opinion? In this work the critic
has a great advantage over the musician. The musician appeals to the
public with volatile and elusive sounds. When he gets past the
tympanum of the ear he works upon the emotions and the fancy. The
public have no time to let him do more; for the rest they are willing
to refer him to the critic, whose business it is continually to hear
music for the purpose of forming opinions about it and expressing
them. The critic has both the time and the obligation to analyze the
reasons why and the extent to which the faculties are stirred into
activity. Is it not plain, therefore, that the critic ought to be
better able to distinguish the good from the bad, the true from the
false, the sound from the meretricious, than the unindividualized
multitude, who are already satisfied when they have felt the ticklings
of pleasure?

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