Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/779

Rh He will stop you in the middle of a crowded room through which you are making your way with great difficulty and danger to a particular object, and ask if you have heard that lovely thing which has just come out, which he proceeds to imitate as well as he can under his breath, with an indication of the peculiarly fine effect of the drum in the twenty-ninth bar. If you speak of the Agricultural Holdings Bill, he is by a singular feat of memory reminded of the Pastoral Symphony, and launches at once into a discussion of its beauties, with practical illustrations. If you rashly quote a line of poetry, he begs you to listen to a little setting of his own of some of the poet's words. If, in despair, his victim attempts to make a diversion to any political question of the day, his talk glides with surprising swiftness from Bismarck to Wagner, the king of Bavaria, and the theatre at Bayreuth. His mission would seem to be to make the very name of the art which he adores odious to all who come under his influence. Fortunately it is possible to meet with musical enthusiasts who have some human feelings, such, for instance, as Mr. Trillo in Peacock's "Crotchet Castle." Lady Clarinda Bossnowl, in that brilliant fiction, describing the company at dinner to Captain Fitzchrome, says: — "Hush! Here is music to soothe your troubled spirit. Next on this side sits the dilettante composer Mr. Trillo; they say his name was O'Trill, and he has taken the O from the beginning and put it at the end. I do not know how this may be. He plays well on the violoncello, and better on the piano; sings agreeably; has a talent at verse-making, and improvises a song with some felicity. He is very agreeable company in the evening with his instruments and music-books." People with such exceptional gifts as Mr. Trillo are, however, rare; were there more of them there would be less direct and indirect suffering caused by the cultivation, or rather want of cultivation, of music which seems to spread with increasing power. Reference to Peacock reminds one that in another of his books, "Headlong Hall," there is a curious seting forth of the theory of music which has lately been put forward as something entirely novel. There Mr. Mac Laurel concludes a dissertation upon music and poetry in these words: — "As gude music will be mair pooerfu' by itsel' than wi' bad poetry, sae will gude poetry than wi' bad music; but when ye put gude music an' gude poetry thegither, ye produce the loveliest compound o' sentimental harmony that can possibly find its way through the lug to the saul." This lovely compound of good music and good poetry has been heard in Wagner's opera this season, which is a good thing. Before next season it is likely that various selections from that opera will be heard in drawing-rooms, which may be not so good. Drawing-room music, as a rule, may be said to be on a par with drawing-room plays; that is, it is sometimes good, sometimes bad, and often indifferent.

 

 From The Guardian.

the large, low dining-room, where preparations are being made for a dinner-party, up a short passage lined with bookshelves, an open doorway admits you to a room — large certainly, but so choked with contents that it rather reminds one of the inside of a disorderly portmanteau. It is square, but for a bay-window in which stands a library table piled with books and papers, an old black velvet sermon-case, a battered travelling writing-case, and a desk, with a wineglass of water on the ledge, and a tattered sheet of blotting-paper, on which lies a bright blue book — "Artist and Craftsman" — the last study of the owner of the room, to judge from the paper-cutter between the leaves. It is flanked by "Lectures on Casuistry," and "Geschichte des Alten Bund." A portentous waste-paper basket stands beneath: both this and the paper-cutter seem fitted by their unusual proportions to cope with their daily work. A hard horse-hair chair, without arms, springs, or cushions, turns its back resolutely to the garden, and its face to the army of papers.

Three tables and a whatnot dispersed over the room serve as foundations for a pyramid of books, reports, periodicals — Cornhills, Macmillans, Revues des Deux Mondes — thatched with the Times, Pall Mall, Saturday, Guardian, and other papers unnumbered. Two wandering book-cases, with double faces and no backs, are stocked with motley rows of volumes, at which we will look closer. Saint Anselm de Canterbury, Artemus Ward, "Science de l'Histoire," a long range of Dumas, Comte's "Système," "Ingoldsby Legends." Are the contents of the shelves which line the walls less miscellaneous?