never mistaken. Some time
since a clergyman with whom Dr. Longhurst happened to be staying,
ridiculed the idea that the musical capability of boys can be judged by
their looks. He took Dr. Longhurst into the village school, and invited
him to pick out the boys of the choir as they sat among others at their
lessons. This Dr. Longhurst did quite correctly. He has no knowledge of
phrenology, and the faculty has come to him simply as the result of long
experience.

On the day of my visit I heard the boys practise in their lofty
music-room. Dr. Longhurst sat at the grand pianoforte, and the boys were
grouped in fours or fives round four music-stands, on which the large
folio voice parts, in type or MS., were placed. These desks stood on
either side of the piano, so that the boys looked towards Dr.
Longhurst. Not many voice exercises are used, nor is there any talk
about the registers. Pure tone is required, and the boys have not "to
reason why." Six or seven of the youngest boys took no part in the
practice of the service music. When the elder boys had done, the younger
came forward and sang some solfeggio exercises. As a help in keeping
time the boys clapped their hands sometimes at the first of the bar, and
beat the pulses of the music. In the single voice parts, with long
rests, this is a help. The boys do not sing any secular music. At one
time they did, but now, with the schooling, the ordinary practices, and
the violin lessons, there is no time. Flattening does not often occur.
As a rule, when they intone on G, the G remains to the end. The practice
of singing the service unaccompanied on Fridays all the year round, and
on Wednesdays in addition during Lent, must have a bracing effect on the
choir. I was myself present on a Wednesday in Lent, and could detect no
falling in pitch. The boys at Canterbury do not appear to receive much
formal voice-training, and I attribute the excellent quality of their
singing to two facts. First, Dr. Longhurst has evidently a knack of
discerning a promising voice; and second, having established a tradition
of good singing, the boys, entering at an early age, insensibly fall
into it.

DR. BUCK'S BOYS AT NORWICH.

I have gathered from Mr. A. R. Gaul, Mus.B., of Birmingham, some
particulars of the work of Dr. Buck, organist of Norwich Cathedral, who
was known forty or fifty years ago all over the country as a trainer of
boys' voices. Mr. Gaul was a boy at Norwich under Dr. Buck, and