nion holding
together all these things. Any phase of life can be understood only by
associating with it some different phase. Sokrates himself has taught us
how the homely things illustrate the grand things. If we turn to the art
of musical composition and inquire into some of the differences between
our recent music and that of Handel's time, we shall alight upon the
very criticism which Mr. Mill somewhere makes in comparing ancient with
modern literature: the substance has improved, but the form has in
some respects deteriorated. The modern music expresses the results of a
richer and more varied emotional experience, and in wealth of harmonic
resources, to say nothing of increased skill in orchestration, it is
notably superior to the old music. Along with this advance, however,
there is a perceptible falling off in symmetry and completeness of
design, and in what I would call spontaneousness of composition. I
believe that this is because modern composers, as a rule, do not drudge
patiently enough upon counterpoint. They do not get that absolute
mastery over technical difficulties of figuration which was the great
secret of the incredible facility and spontaneity of composition
displayed by Handel and Bach. Among recent musicians Mendelssohn is the
most thoroughly disciplined in the elements of counterpoint; and it is
this perfect mastery of the technique of his art which has enabled him
to outrank Schubert and Schumann, neither of whom would one venture to
pronounce inferior to him in native wealth of musical ideas. May we
not partly attribute to rudimentary deficiency in counterpoint the
irregularity of structure which so often disfigures the works of the
great Wagner and the lesser Liszt, and which the more ardent admirers of
these composers are inclined to regard as a symptom of progress?

I am told that a similar illustration might be drawn from the modern
history of painting; that, however noble the conceptions of the great
painters of the present century, there are none who have gained such a
complete mastery over the technicalities of drawing and the handling of
the brush as was required in the times of Raphael, Titian, and Rubens.
But on this point I can only speak from hearsay, and am quite willing
to end here my series of illustrations, fearing that I may already
have been wrongly set down as a lavulator temporis acti. Not the idle
praising of times gone by, but the getting a lesson from them which may
be of