nce they could see the vast amphitheatre, filled with thousands of
faces. Here at length was quietness, intermission of folly and
brutality. Bob became another man as he stood and listened. He looked
with kindness into Pennyloaf's pale, weary face, and his arm stole
about her waist to support her. Ha! Pennyloaf was happy! The last trace
of tears vanished. She too was sensible of the influences of music; her
heart throbbed as she let herself lean against her husband.

Well, as every one must needs have his panacea for the ills of society,
let me inform you of mine. To humanise the multitude two things are
necessary--two things of the simplest kind conceivable. In the first
place, you must effect an entire change of economic conditions: a
preliminary step of which every tyro will recognise the easiness; then
you must bring to bear on the new order of things the constant
influence of music. Does not the prescription recommend itself? It is
jesting in earnest. For, work as you will, there is no chance of a new
and better world until the old be utterly destroyed. Destroy, sweep
away, prepare the ground; then shall music the holy, music the
civiliser, breathe over the renewed earth, and with Orphean magic raise
in perfected beauty the towers of the City of Man.

Hours yet before the fireworks begin. Never mind; here by good luck we
find seats where we can watch the throng passing and repassing. It is a
great review of the People. On the whole how respectable they are, how
sober, how deadly dull! See how worn-out the poor girls are becoming,
how they gape, what listless eyes most of them have! The stoop in the
shoulders so universal among them merely means over-toil in the
workroom. Not one in a thousand shows the elements of taste in dress;
vulgarity and worse glares in all but every costume. Observe the
middle-aged women; it would be small surprise that their good looks had
vanished, but whence comes it they are animal, repulsive, absolutely
vicious in ugliness? Mark the men in their turn: four in every six have
visages so deformed by ill-health that they excite disgust; their hair
is cut down to within half an inch of the scalp; their legs are twisted
out of shape by evil conditions of life from birth upwards. Whenever a
youth and a girl come along arm-in-arm, how flagrantly shows the man's
coarseness! They are pretty, so many of these girls, delicate of
feature, graceful did but their slavery allow them natural development