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ENGLISH MUSIC. 
By J. MACQUEEN. 
(Read at Whitehaven.) 
I shall endeavour to-night to give you a brief sketch of the 
progress of English Music from the earliest times, and to show that 
at no period could England be truly called an unmusical nation. 
We are not now what we should be. Our choirs and choral 
societies depend upon the few instead of the many; and it was 
the hope that I might call your attention to our vast and beautiful 
stores of native music, and lead you to encourage the practice of 
it, which induced me to undertake a task for which I felt I was but 
feebly prepared. 
The field of English Music is too wide to be travelled over in 
one evening, and I shall therefore confine my attention mainly to 
one corner of it, but a very interesting and productive one—that 
of the Secular Vocal Music. Our Cathedral Music is, I believe, 
unequalled by that of any other nation, whether we regard skill of 
construction, or devotional spirit and feeling. In all other depart- 
ments of musical composition, England may hold up her head 
without a blush ; and the more we become intimate with the works 
of our national composers, the greater will be our wonder and 
_ regret that they are not better known. 
Do not be alarmed if I take you back nearly two thousand 
years, when our land was a wild waste wood and swamp alternating, 
the inhabitants, for the most part, wild barbarians, eking out as 
they best could a precarious existence. We shall not tarry long 
among them; our school-days have told us enough about those 
