like fashion by treating animals, birds, and fishes with a
degree of cruelty so appalling as to disgust every right-thinking and
right-feeling man and woman; and they tell you that the stag likes to
be disembowelled, the bird to have its wings shattered, the fish to be
torn to pieces in its agonised struggle for life. Or, having been
moved by the consequences of sin, they straightway go and prepare
cases for the divorce courts; having appreciated the purity and peace
of monastery life and a daily communion service, they return without
hesitation or sense of inconsistency to their favourite modes of
gambling; having revelled in the most lovely music in the world, they
proceed to listen nightly to the ugliest and silliest music in the
world. Their appreciation of Bayreuth is a sham; they would cheerfully
go elsewhere--say to Homburg--if Bayreuth were shut up; and before
long they will go to Homburg or elsewhere, whether Bayreuth is shut up
or not.

A NOTE ON BRAHMS

It is not an exaggeration to say that probably there are not a dozen
musicians in Europe who have formed any precise and final opinion as
to where Brahms should be placed. One gets to know him very slowly.
His appearance and manner (so to speak), so extremely dignified, are
very much in his favour; but when one tries to get to terms of
intimacy with him he has a fatal trick of repelling one by that
"austerity" or chilliness of which we have heard so much. And the
worst of it is that too frequently a sharp suspicion strikes one that
there is little behind that austere manner--that his reticence does
not so much imply matter held in reserve as an absence of matter. I do
not mean by this that Brahms was a paradoxical fool who was clever
enough to hold his tongue lest he was found out, nor even that he
purposely veiled his lack of meaning. On the contrary, a composer who
wished more devoutly to be sincere never put pen to paper. But he had
not the intellect of an antelope; and he took up in all honesty a role
for which he had only the slightest qualification. The true Brahms,
the Brahms who does not deceive himself, is the Brahms you find in
many of the songs, in some of the piano and chamber music, in the
smaller movements of his symphonies, and in certain passages of his
overtures; and I have no hesitation whatever in asserting (though the
opinion is subject to revision) that his songs are much the most
satisfactory things he did. Here, unweighted by a