196 AN ANGLER'S HOURS xi 



do not remember, but this is just such a 

 wall, and I see in myself a certain likeness 

 to that bad child. It is much too hot to 

 climb the wall, but I am reposing in its 

 shadow, while in the distance I can hear 

 the good child singing a hymn. In the hot 

 weather the Sunday school is held in the 

 rectory garden close to the old sun-dial, and 

 the opening hymn sounds very pleasant and 

 soothing from afar. 



A whimsical idea of an open-air cure for 

 English music comes across me ; distance 

 and the summer breezes have a most refin- 

 ing effect on the raw effort. But I fear it 

 would not achieve its object. After all, it 

 is not English music that is at fault, but that 

 glorious and barbaric power, the British 

 public, which insists on having what it 

 wants, even if it has to pay for it. They 

 that pay the piper must call the tune, and 

 if the tune they call is a poor one it is not 

 the piper's fault ; he has to live, poor man, 

 in spite of the Voltaires, his critics. I do 

 not know why I should have been betrayed 

 into airing an urban grievance, unless it is 

 that I have not yet got over my indignation 

 at hearing, on the first evening of my stay 



