Page:The Early English Organ Builders and their work.djvu/15

Rh strolling player or the conjuror! Again, one of our modern popular writers of fiction, who masks himself under the designation of "Cornelius O'Dowd," thus gives his opinion of the musical profession in one of the recent numbers of "Blackwood":

"Mendelssohn alone of all our present-day men had genius: as for the others, there is not one of them whose worst ballad is not better than he who wrote it. They are the shallowest thinkers, the worst informed on matters of general interest, and the poorest conversationalists the world produces. They are as circumscribed as the actor, and they have not that humoristic tendency which gives to the actor all the emphasis of his character. Next in order to musicians come hairdressers."

What shall we say to the pitiful scribbler whose knowledge of our glorious art and its professors is so warped and so shallow! Words are useless; it were better to leave him in the undisturbed possession of his own feelings. We have, however, the satisfaction of believing in the maxim of our immortal poet, that "such a man is