ir ears with music that was ravishing even when only
partially intelligible. Insensibly they grew to like it, and although
defections were large and many refused to rise above the "popular"
standard, there is no doubt that he succeeded in elevating the taste of
the general public. Year by year he was bringing his audiences nearer to
himself, and year by year he was winning new converts from the love of the
meretricious and flashy to that of the noble and pure.

He alone derived no benefit from his labors. He had no adequate support,
no relief from the most sordid and worrying cares of life. He found
himself almost forced into competition that was degrading. Had he entered
into it he would have thrown down with his own hand the structure he had
spent his life in rearing. He was alternately warmed by the admiration and
love of a few and chilled by general apathy, and has chosen wisely in
going where he will at least be lifted above the necessity of struggling
for subsistence. New York has lost him, but had it known that Cincinnati
was trying to coax him away it would have let him go never.

It is singular that the matter of making New York attractive to the lovers
of art and music is never looked at by its wealthy citizens from the
commercial point of view. Art and music exert influences that can be
computed upon strict business principles, and the policy of neglecting
them is extremely short-sighted. Every addition to the attractions of a
city, and especially of a city essentially commercial, is an addition to
its prosperity. The prestige that would have accrued to New York, and the
wealth that would certainly have been attracted to it, had it adopted
Cincinnati's course of action, would unquestionably have far more than
compensated for the outlay attending the endowment of a college of music
and the engagement of Theodore Thomas. With this assumption the
idiosyncrasy of New York may be viewed in full. Like the prudent merchant
of moderate attainments and medium culture, it is not far-seeing when a
question arises not strictly in its line of business. Sympathetic,
outwardly decorous, keenly sensitive, full of pity for the suffering, New
York enters the field of art in a purely mercantile spirit. It has no
love, but only that peculiar kind of affection that is the outgrowth of
triumph over a rival. An individual parallel might be found in the case of
the old gentleman who haunted the auction-rooms and filled his house with