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THE BIRMINGHAM MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 



Previous to entering on the consideration of the last Birming- 

 ham Festival, it is the intention of the writers of the following re- 

 marts to lay before the readers of The Anali/st certain general 

 reflections concerning the legitimate purpose and scope of such 

 meetings. To this course we have been irresistibly impelled by the 

 conviction that principles of no mean importance to the welfare of 

 mankind are involved in the question, Whether musical festivals 

 are deserving of encouragement from the reflecting and the consci- 

 entious .'' or whether they are an evil against which it is the duty 

 of the pious and the virtuous to make a vigorous stand .'* The task 

 which we have undertaken is rendered the more necessary from the 

 circumstance that while the opponents of musical festivals have 

 boldly and in tangible terms urged serious accusations, their asser- 

 tions have hitherto rather been evaded than fairly met, rather set 

 aside than satisfactorily refuted. Whilst we admit that, in the pre- 

 sent state of the controversy, the objectors have the best of the ar- 

 gument, it nevertheless appears to us that the notions of both par- 

 ties are erroneous, or at best shallow and one-sided. When, on the 

 one hand, we hear these meetings extolled for the assistance which 

 they render to charitable institutions, and on the other inveighed 

 against, in no measured terras, as fostering impiety, as introducing 

 the profane thing into the " holy of holies," and as gratifying the 

 flesh at the expense of the immortal spirit, we conceive that both 

 praise and blame are attributed where they are least of all due, from 

 the confused notions of right and wrong possessed by both parties, 

 and from the substitution of those notions for the broad and immu- 

 table principles which reason, properly employed, is capable of de- 

 ducing from the word and works of the Creator. Thus will men 

 ever pursue an erratic and devious course, so long as they allow 

 themselves to be tossed by conflicting opinions, without the compass 

 of reason to warn them off the shoals and sand-banks on which 

 their feelings, passions, and prejudices, are but too apt to strand 

 them. How long will they keep their eyes rivetted on the surface, 

 neglecting the things which lie hid from immediate view, ignorant 

 that precisely these are the most worthy of examination ? How 

 long will they prize the letter above the spirit, the expression above 

 the thought which it clothes ? When will their eyes be opened to 

 the fact that the errors, the vice, and the misery, caused by igno- 

 rance, exceed a hundred fold the sufferings produced by wilful mis 



