studying
them. It is necessary to be profound in art and science, to know
its elements thoroughly. Classical books can only be well done by
those who have grown gray in harness; it is the middle and the end
which light up the darkness of the beginning. Ask your friend
D'Alembert, the coryphaeus of mathematics, if he thinks himself too
good to write about the elements. It was not till after thirty or
forty years of practice that my uncle got a glimpse of the
profundities and the first rays of light in musical theory.

_I._--O madman, arch-madman, I cried, how comes it that in thine
evil head such just ideas go pell-mell with such a mass of
extravagances?

_He._--Who on earth can find that out? 'Tis chance that flings them
to you, and they remain. If you do not know the whole of a thing,
you know none of it well; you do not know whither one thing leads,
nor whence another has come, where this and that should be placed,
which ought to pass the first, and where the second would be best.
Can you teach well without method? And method, whence comes that? I
vow to you, my dear philosopher, I have a notion that physics will
always be a poor science, a drop of water raised by a needle-point
from the vast ocean, a grain loosened from an Alpine chain. And
then, seeking the reasons of phenomena! In truth, one might every
whit as well be ignorant, as know so little and know it so ill; and
that was exactly my doctrine when I gave myself out for a
music-master. What are you musing over?

_I._--I am thinking that all you have told me is more specious than
solid. But that is no matter. You taught, you say, accompaniment
and composition.

_He._--Yes.

_I._--And you knew nothing about either.

_He._--No, i' faith; and that is why there were worse than I was,
namely those who fancied they knew something. At any rate, I did
not spoil either the child's taste or its hands. When they passed
from me to a good master, if they had learnt nothing, at all events
they had nothing to unlearn, and that was always so much time and
so much money saved.

_I._--What did you do?

_He._--What they all do! I got there, I threw myself into a chair.
"What shocking weather! How tiring the streets are!" Then some
gossip: "Mademoiselle Lemierre was to have take