en a decided preference for any style. We
like Beethoven and Chopin, but we also like Rossini and Donizetti and
delight in Lecocq and Sullivan. In no respect is the national pride so
utterly forgotten as in music. We give to all schools a fair hearing.
The great German masters are household words: the national music of
every land is welcome. We have been learning to like Italian opera at an
insane cost; we have kindly winked at the follies of opera-bouffe;
probably nowhere in the world are the intellectual depths of a German
symphony and the passionate declamation of an Italian recitative more
thoroughly appreciated. This is the natural musical exposition of our
complex and various life. This wondrous variety, which indicates
possibilities not yet revealed, pleases us without being always clear to
our feelings and intellect. Still, we shall not ask, with the Frenchman,
"Sonate, que veux-tu?" We are satisfied with what the present affords,
and what new masters shall appear or what new instruments be invented we
know not. Always the epochs will have their own interpreter. One hundred
years ago who had imagined a Weber or Steinway piano, that piece of
furniture with a soul in it?

It has been suggested to me while writing this paper that national
melodies are in a great measure influenced by the physical features of
the country in which they rise. I think very little so. It is true that
the music of all mountainous countries has many points of resemblance,
but it is because the people of such countries have strong mental and
moral similitudes. Savages are not inspired by the most lovely scenery,
and a collection of national airs from different parts of the world
would not reveal to us whether they were written in valleys or on
mountains or by the sounding seashore.

There are distinct ensigns by which national music may be as promptly
detected as a ship by its colors. Spanish airs have in them the rapid
twinkling, so to speak, of the guitar; the mountain-melodies of
Switzerland recall the open notes of the Alp-horn; the Irish and Scotch
musics have their marks as plainly impressed upon them as the
physiognomy of the peoples is distinct, and it is nothing to the
purpose to say that they have been cleverly imitated: the mark still
remains a fact, and is the mysterious specialty that thrills the rich,
the poor, the soldier and the churchman, the peasant and the exile.
Whatever analogy exists between a country and its music i