associated a number of influential gentlemen with him to give a series of good orchestral concerts in Exeter Hall. He formed a good band, and invited over some foreign musicians of eminence to conduct them; among whom, in different years, were Lindpaintner, Berlioz, and Spohr. The music was well done, and selections of great interest were chosen; for, as a good chorus was provided, vocal works of considerable magnitude and novelty, as well as instrumental ones of high character, were included in the programmes; and the performances excited great interest among the musicians of London. The speculation was a bold and laudable one; but the expenses were very heavy, the place was too large, and the thing did not pay. Dr. Wylde contracted the scale, and removed first to St. Martin's Hall, then to Hanover Square, and finally to St. James' Hall, where the concerts, conducted now entirely by himself, and, we believe, on his own responsibility, are now held. Five or six concerts are given during the season, for a moderate subscription; each contains generally one symphony, two overtures, one instrumental concerto, and some vocal pieces. The music is usually very creditably done; during the last season excellent performances were given of Beethoven's Choral Symphony (apparently a great favourite with this audience), and of Mendelssohn's music to Antigone. Dr. Wylde has done much in these concerts to bring good orchestral music within the reach of moderate payers, and deserves credit accordingly.

We have yet another series of firstrate orchestral concerts, that of the Musical Society. This institution was founded in 1858, having for its object "the advancement of music in England;" and its operations are stated to embrace orchestral and choral concerts of a high class, conversazioni, meetings for the discussion of musical subjects and for private practice, and the establishment of a good musical library. The concerts, given in St. James' Hall, number four in each year; and new or little known works of importance are gene

rally introduced in the course of the season. A novelty this year has been an interesting symphony by Schumann. The band is very excellent, and is well disciplined by the conductor, Mr. Alfred Mellon.

Lastly, as regards orchestral concerts, we have had a new society established this year, calling itself the "Musical Art Union," which has given, in the Hanover Square Rooms, three concerts, vocal and instrumental, with the chief object of bringing out high-class music, either new, or not much known. The novelties this season have been an overture by Beethoven, Op. 124, very seldom performed; a new symphony, by Rubinstein, interesting to hear, but of no great success; Cherubini's fine Requiem; and a Cantata by Gade-"The Erl-King's Daughter." The band and chorus mustered nearly 120 strong; the performances, under the conductorship of Mr. Klindworth, were very respectable; and the object was highly praiseworthy. We hope they had encouragement enough to induce the society to continue.

We must not omit to notice, also, the progress, of late years, of another branch of instrumental music, which, though less pretentious than the orchestral variety, is of equally high rank in a critical point of view, namely, classical chamber music. It was long supposed that instrumental quartetts and quintetts were of far too refined and recherché a nature for the popular ears, and were only to be admired by select circles of highly-educated dilettanti; but it wanted only a trial to disprove this idea. A year or two ago a set of concerts was established, held weekly in St. James' Hall, at a very low rate of admission, under the name of the "Popular Concerts," in which the principal attraction was the performance, by first-rate artists, of music of this kind. The experiment has proved that such music had only to be well brought before the public to be highly appreciated by them. The room was nightly crowded, and the Popular Concerts, under able management, have become a permanent metropolitan insti tution.

rence of some special pianoforte performances worth mentioning. This year has been distinguished for a remarkable series by Mr. Charles Hallé, one of our best players-namely, no less than the performance at several morning concerts of the whole of Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas, upwards of thirty in number. This, the finest collection of pianoforte music in existence, most unexceptionably played, was, indeed, a great treat to those who heard it, and formed, we think, no mean element of the general high tone which music has taken during the past season.

And, while we are on the subject of the pianoforte, we would not lose the opportunity of raising our voice against the wretched and unworthy style of music which is now so much in vogue for this instrument at boarding-schools and other places where they learn to play. We allude to that amorphous, scratchy, fantastical style of composition (if we may so debase the word), the essence of which consists in torturing scraps of airs into a wild, harum-scarum filagree of notes, scattered about the instrument in a manner so utterly unmeaning as only to excite ridicule or disgust, instead of pleasure, in any well-regulated musical mind. Music this is not; it is not written by musicians, nor played, as a matter of choice, by musicians either; and it is rather puzzling to conceive how, in the face of the great body of excellent and intelligent teachers we have, it can have come into use. Probably Thalberg would be quoted as its originator, but this is a libel on him; his music, though quite novel, and more free in style than any that had gone before, was still intelligible and rational music;-this is music run mad; and we can only account for its existence by supposing it to be the production of authors who are incompetent to produce any pro

per music, and so fill the sheets of their publishers with rubbish of this kind. It is, we suppose, a fashion which young ladies fall into, like crinoline, or the imitation of the pretty horsebreakers, and which will in due time come to an end. But we warn them, that the prevalence in drawingrooms of this deplorable style of playing is fast becoming unendurable; and we are apt, on hearing of the profitless difficulties of the pieces, to exclaim with Dr. Johnson, "Difficult! I wish they were impossible!"

We are not among the cynics who would condemn little girls to play Beethoven's Sonatas and Mendelssohn's Lieder. Let us have gay, even trivial, music, if you will; so that it be music, and not empty imposture. We can listen with pleasure to the Pluie des Perles for the thousandth time, or to the Dixey's Land Polka, under the hand of a little maiden of six, with infinitely greater pleasure than to a modern "brilliant fantasia" which has taken a regulation young lady a quarter of finishing lessons to learn, and which, when done, being totally devoid of either melody, harmony, or rhythm, has no legitimate claim to be called music at all.

The true remedy for this, as for all other cases of bad taste in music, is the constant production before the public of compositions of a true and higher standard. It is impossible that any mind, capable of music impressions at all, can, after hearing good music, rest content with bad; and therefore we return to the sentiment with which we set out-namely, that, when we review the constantly-increasing amount of good music offered to the public, and the constantly-increasing interest with which the public receives it, we must augur well for the progress of the art in this country.

are

HAVING demonstrated, in our former paper, how humanity is to be considered as an organic whole, whose particular organs individual men, we are now better enabled to answer the question about the rule of what they have to do and to shun, or in other words, the question about good and evil. We have to seek the rule which determines the actions and aims of mankind, and from this rule. we then may infer the laws which must govern the activity of every individual. For every individual, in every action, is a representative of, and works for, humanity, which produces for every given task a particular fitting performer. The organic whole of humanity may here be compared to the thinking artist, and every individual man may be likened to a finger of that artist-a finger which contributes to realize what the thinking head has invented and intended.

We have, first, to find the ruling law for the actions of mankind in the whole. What is a law? This word, "law," has different meanings, of which the following example is an illustration. A timepiece is designed to mark the true time of day, which design is the law of the timepiece. The very best timepieces, the chronometers, do not fully answer that purpose; for the most improved timepieces are indeed almost uniform and accurate in their motion, but the motion does not exactly agree with the revolution of the earth, which must be normal for the timepiece. The real motion of the timepiece, therefore, has another law than that which the artist would have given, if he had been able fully to realize his intentions. Therefore, the captain of a ship, or the astronomer, has to calculate

rtain tables, which point out the dif

ference between the motion of the chronometer and that of the earth; and by those tables he may know at a moment's notice how much the time measured by his chronometer differs from the revolution of the stars. This revolution, therefore, of the stars, or the calendar, is the law for that which the timepiece ought to be; whereas those calculated tables mark the law of what the timepiece is, and of what degree of perfection this instrument is capable. The two laws in this case differ from each other, because the instrument, whose law is being sought, does not correspond in reality to the rational intention of him who made it. But, if a thing is entirely rational and perfect in all its parts, then those two laws are congruent; and there are no more two laws for it-there is only one. For instance, we never can say of a star that it ought to go in such a manner, but that it goes in another manner, because the calculations of the astronomer do not agree with its orb; but we shall not hesitate to pronounce that the astronomer was wrong in his calculations. The reader will know that we owe one of the most splendid manifestations of human sagacity to this principle-the discovery of the planet Neptune by Leverrier.

This example will make it evident that for a thing entirely rational and perfect there exists only one law, because in reality such a thing is all that it ought to be, so that, if I know what it is designed to be, I at the same time know what it is in reality. Now it is our persuasion that mankind, as a totality, is perfectly rational. Is not the world created by God-that is, by the highest and most absolute wisdom and rationality we are able to imagine? and can the highest wisdom create what

is otherwise than wise and rational in all its parts? But this must be elucidated by some words more.

An entire that is throughout homogeneous can only contain homogeneous parts. A cubic foot of genuine gold can no longer be called genuine gold if the smallest possible part of it is adulterated by the smallest possible alloy of some other metal. A metallic body is perfectly metallic, be it golden, or be it composed of gold and silver, or of a mixture of all possible metals; but, if the smallest part of it is not metallic, then the whole can no more be called a perfectly metallic body. It is the same with the mental and spiritual attributes of a subject. A history is perfectly true so long as not the smallest error nor the smallest untruth is contained therein; and a perfectly rational entire is no more perfectly rational if it contains even the smallest particle of irrationality. It is, therefore, needless to prove that in the universe, created rationally by God's supreme reason, there can be contained nothing contradictory to rationality. It will be objected that, among men, who are doubtless a part of the universe, there occur so many things and actions contrary to reason. But this seeming contradiction ceases to puzzle us if we bear in mind that this irrationality exists only because we look at the individual actions of men as such, and not as forming a part of the whole created world. That is irrational which is in contradiction with the rational intention of Him who has to command; and, in a world created by the wisdom and the omnipotence of God, we cannot think that anything should be allowed to exist in opposition to His supreme rationality, and to His almighty will.

Man is the noblest of all creatures who obey the laws of nature. Favoured with the faculty of acting according to our own free will, and with the power of thinking and reasoning, we may call ourselves the crown of creation. This freedom and self-government of ours cannot be conceived without the faculty of acting according to our own pleasure,

either reasonably or unreasonably; for man is not free unless the impulse of being rational be balanced by an equal impulse of being irrational. If such an equilibrium exists, it is as likely that a man should act right as that he should act wrong, and a third power must supervene to engage him to do either. Such an irrationality of human action is irrational only as long as we occupy ourselves with humanity isolated from its connexion with the universe; and human irrationality exists only and exclusively within the sphere of mankind, but disappears as we ascend to a point of view whence the whole world appears as a unity, and mankind as an organical part of this unity. The irrationality inseparable from human nature is rational as an elastic spring within the wonderful mechanism of the world.

He who ventures to deny this may say with equal propriety that fire was only created to warm and to shine, but, when the same fire burns our houses, or ignites the stake to burn innocently condemned persons, declare that this phenomenon is contrary to the purpose of its Creator, and only permitted by Him. If any one should in earnest bring forward such a proposition, it would not be difficult to set him right by showing that he regarded fire from a very narrow point of view, unable to appreciate that so-called element as an indispensable agent within. the sphere of matter. Such an individual would mistake that essential agent of nature for an accidental instrument for the use of man. On the contrary, whenever we discuss human affairs, in order to judge clearly, we must keep in view humanity as an organic inseparable Entire. If then this united humanity in its totality bear in itself a power of surmounting and rendering inoffensive the irrationality of the separate parts, then the final result, produced by the conflict of all actions and reactions of reason and error, must be rationality and harmony. Only with this final result, with this surplus of reason, humanity enters as a rational part into the organization of the Universe, despatching the business of combating