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THE MUSICIAN ABOUT TOWN. 



Under the above title, it is our intention to present our readers 

 with a record of prominent events and transactions that exclusively 

 belong to Music in its scientific and artistical character. Both as a 

 science and an art, Music has, within the last quarter of a century, 

 acquired such an ascendancy in the list of accomplishments requisite 

 to complete an Englishman's education, that we no longer hear the 

 study of it treated as an elegant frivolity by the practical or moral 

 philosopher ; or as a pleasing, dexterous attainment, proper to while 

 away a listless hour, by the possessor of aristocratic leisure : or, 

 lastly, as an enervating and engrossing, and therefore dangerous, 

 relaxation, by the man of mercantile pursuit : which last section of 

 the British community, by the way, at the moment of denouncing 

 the fascination of a social concert, could, with an edifying inconsis- 

 tency of action, devote whole nights of every week to a whist club. 

 Over and over have we heard precise men of business, who have 

 also been persevering card-players, very gravely protest against the 

 allurements of a quartett society, upon the sole ground that it dis- 

 tracts a young man's mind from his mercantile vocation. This pre- 

 judice has so far faded away that there is scarcely a periodical work 

 throughout the kingdom that does not devote a portion of its co- 

 lumns to musical intelligence of the ordinary popular class, while 

 many of them, more especially dedicated to a science or an art, 

 nevertheless contain opinions (and frequently judicious ones) upon 

 musical performances, while some assert their pretensions in the 

 science of counterpoint. Even The Gardener 's Gazette has its mu- 

 sical editor, who speaks " with authority, and not as a scrub," upon 

 consecutive filths and inconsequent resolutions. Various circum- 

 stances have conspired, within the present century, to improve the 

 naturally fine character of the English ; but nothing has contributed 

 so effectually to soften, without effeminizing, the national manners, 

 as the increased and increasing cultivation of the science of Music. 

 The springing up of choral societies all over the country — more es- 

 pecially in the dense manufacturing districts — is the result of this 

 improvement in taste. The same effect may be observed in London, 

 where the amateur choral societies are multiplying and increasing to 

 a remarkable and satisfactory extent. The performances of the 

 '•' Sacred Harmonic Society," at Exeter Hall, now hold an important 

 station in the rank of metropolitan recreations ; and the prospect of 

 its three or four hundred members, almost all of them mechanics, or 



