ations, with regard to my three
daughters, and all the talented pupils whom I have been able to educate
for good amateurs, and, according to circumstances, for good public
performers. The great number of these suffices for my justification. I
must add, still further, that it is exactly the "great talents" for
singing, or for the piano, who require the most careful, thoughtful, and
prudent guidance. Look around at the multitude of abortive talents and
geniuses! Talented pupils are just the ones who have an irresistible
desire to be left to their own discretion; they esteem destruction by
themselves more highly than salvation by others.

MRS. SOLID. But it is said that you have been able to educate only your
three daughters, and none others for public performers.

DOMINIE. Madam, you cannot be serious. If I were to declaim Leporello's
list, you might justly consider it an exaggeration; but if, instead of
replying to you, I should urge you to read what I have written on the
subject, or if I should present your daughter Emily to you, after three
or four years, as a superior performer, you might pardon my vanity and
my ability. I do not possess any magic wand, which envy and folly could
not impute to me as an offence. Nevertheless, unless circumstances were
very adverse, I have, at all events, been able in a short time to
accomplish for my pupils the acquisition of a good, or at least an
improved, musical touch; and have thus laid a foundation, which other
teachers have failed to do by their method, or rather want of method.
But you have something else on your mind?

MRS. SOLID. You anticipate me. I was educated in Berlin, and in that
capital of intelligence a taste prevails for opposition, negation, and
thorough criticism. How can you educate artists and _virtuosos_, when
you yourself are so little a _virtuoso_? You are not even a composer or
learned contrapuntist. A teacher of music wins much greater
consideration, if he himself plays concertos and composes pretty things,
and if he can calculate and give vent to his genius in double and triple
fugues, and in inverse and retrograde canons. You cannot even accompany
your pupils with the violin or flute, which is certainly very useful and
improving.

DOMINIE. The egotist is seldom capable of giving efficient instruction:
that lies in the nature of the case. Even a child will soon perceive
whether the teacher has a sole eye to its interest, or has other and
personal aims i