great things of the spirit by which
we chiefly live to those whom the world calls dreamers, among whom the
great musicians have had, and, I hope and believe, will always have, no
mean place. Against the 'practical Englishman', and all that his
attitude to music involves, we can all of us fight in our respective
spheres: and I would commend to you for useful weapons three very
different books by very different men--Sir Hubert Parry's great book on
_Style in Musical Art_, Mr. C.T. Smith's account of his artistic work in
an elementary school in the East End of London which he calls _The Music
of Life_, and a pamphlet _Starved Arts mean Low Pleasures_ recently
written by Mr. Bernard Shaw for the British Music Society. And one
particular line of indirect attack, easily open to all of us, is, I am
inclined to think, specially promising. In the third and fourth verses
of the thirty-fifth chapter of the book of Ecclesiasticus we shall find
these injunctions, which I translate as literally as Greek epigrams can
be translated: 'Do not hinder music: do not pour out chatter during any
artistic performance: and do not argue unseasonably.' In other words,
conversation, however valuable, prevents complete listening to music;
and music that is not meant to be listened to in its completeness is not
worth calling music, and had much better not be there at all. Musical
progress will be spiritually well on its way when we all realize this
axiomatic truth as firmly as this Hebrew sage of two thousand years and
more ago.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 71: _The Times_, April 17, 1919.]

XII

THE MODERN RENASCENCE

F. MELIAN STAWELL

To understand in any degree the modern outlook on life it seems
necessary to go back to the time of the French Revolution. For at that
stirring epoch there flamed up in the minds of enthusiasts an ideal of
man's life larger than had ever yet been known, and one that has
dominated us all ever since. If we give, as I think we should give, a
wide sense to the word 'Liberty' and make it mean all that stands for
self-development, then one may say that this ideal was fairly well
summed-up in the famous Revolutionary watchword, 'Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity'. It is impossible at any rate to read the idealists of that
time and its sequel--say from 1793 to 1848--whether in France, Germany,
England, or Italy, whether inside or outside the Revolutionary ranks,
without feeling their buoyant hope that a fresh era was