y agree or
disagree in the manner of the interpretation. Half the audience
probably know every bar of the music by heart, and no inconsiderable
number could perhaps perform it very decently themselves. It is indeed
at these quartett and quintett meetings, that you see genuine
specimens of musical knowledge and musical enthusiasm. They take place
by half-dozens during the season; and you always find the same class
of audience, often the same individuals, regularly ranged before the
executants.

But place now for the real grand, miscellaneous, popular, and populous
morning concert! Now for elephantine dimensions and leviathan bills of
fare. It is nominally, perhaps, or really, perhaps, the annual benefit
concert of some well-known performer, or it is the speculation of a
great musical publishing house, in the name of one of their composing
or performing _proteges_. The latter is, indeed, a very common
practice. But whether the music-publishing and opera-box-letting firm
be the real concert-giver, or merely the agent, to it is left the
whole of the nice operation of 'getting up' the entertainment. It has
then exhausted all the dodges of puffery in pumping up an unusual
degree of excitement. The affair is to be a 'festival' or a 'jubilee;'
'all the musical talent' of London is to be concentrated; the
continent has been dragged for extra-ordinary executive attractions;
every musical hit of the season is to be repeated; every effect is to
be got up with new _eclat_: never was there to be such a _super extra,
ne plus ultra_ musical triumph. The day approaches. Rainbow-hued
_affiches_ have done their best; placard-bearers, by scores, have
paraded, and are parading, the streets; advertisements have blazoned
the scheme day after day, and week after week; the gratis-tickets have
been duly 'planted;' puffs, oblique and implied, have hinted at the
coming attraction in every Sunday paper; and programmes are fluttering
in every get-at-able shop-front. The day comes. A long line of
fashionable carriages, strangely intermingled with shabby cabs, file
up to the doors, and the gay morning dresses, flaunting with colours,
disappear between the two colossal placards which grace the entrance.
The room is filled. _Habitues_, and knowing musical men on town,
recognise each other, and congregate in groups, laughingly comparing
notes upon the probabilities of what artists announced will make an
appearance, and upon what apologies will be offere