Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/128

114, 8th April, 1840. ……Music has long been peculiarly a native growth of this country, and it is just that tendency in it which lies nearest the heart of every thoughtful and receptive lover of art, the tendency, I mean, towards the expression of true and profound feeling, which has struck the deepest root among us from the beginning. This wide-spread sympathy in our nation is certainly no matter of accident, nor has it been without weighty result for our general culture. And thus music has been a most vital power among us, not only as affording momentary pleasures, but working for our higher and spiritual growth. Whoever is really interested in this art must also feel keenly the desire to see it established for the future on the firmest possible basis.

The dominant tendency of our time, however, is towards the positive and the mechanical; and in face of this the development and propagation of true artistic sense is doubly needful, but also doubly