Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/129

Rh difficult. The attainment of this end seems only possible if we begin at the foundation. And good grounding is the surest method in every sort of education, certainly it is so in music. We need a good school of music which would include all the various branches of the art, subjecting each in turn to that higher aim towards which they all serve as means, and leading on its scholars as far as possible to that aim; such a school would be able to combat the practical or material tendency which, unhappily, has many influential adherents among artists themselves, and would, I believe, even yet be strong enough to overcome it.

Simple, private teaching, which in former days bore such admirable fruit, and that, too, for the community at large, is for many reasons no longer adequate to our needs. Masters capable of teaching any musical instrument were formerly to be found in all classes of society, but this has more and more declined in our day, and is now to a great extent confined to a single instrument—the piano.

The scholars who desire instruction in other directions are almost entirely limited to those who devote themselves to music as a profession, and to these people the means of paying for good private teaching are generally wanting. It is the fact that among these one often finds the most brilliant talents; but unfortunately teachers of music are on their side seldom in a position to devote their time to the development of even the greatest talent without remuneration, and thus scholars and teachers alike lose, the first the