L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE, 191 
our madrigal writers and Church writers, and writers for the Virginals 
and the Lute, were not isolated phenomena, brought by some unexpected 
Providence into a country unfit to receive them; they were the natural 
outgrowth of a civilisation which accepted music as an essential part 
of a man’s upbringing and nurture. In the days of Elizabeth the 
whole of England was full of music, as Shakespeare’s plays are full 
of it, and we are not so much better than our Elizabethan ancestors 
that we can afford to disregard what they claimed as one of the most 
valuable parts of their education. 
It has been said that complaints against an abuse have usually been 
most urgent at the time when the abuse is in the natural course of 
being redressed, and this is certainly true of the strictures which have 
been made in the earlier part of this paper. During the last twenty 
years an extraordinary change has taken place in the part assigned 
to music in our civilised life. The reform is only just at its beginning, 
but it has as a matter of fact begun, and though we may be like 
Caesar and ‘ think nought done while ‘aught remains to do,’ we can, 
at any rate, see round us enough signs of progress to go forward with 
considerable encouragement. For one thing, the study of music no 
longer means, as it did a generation ago, a reluctant drill in the 
elementary practice of a musical instrument. We are learning the 
wisdom of confining our executants to those who show some taste or 
aptitude for performance, and have come to see that confining the 
study of music to them is just as irrational as it would be if we 
confined the study of literature to students who aimed at being poets 
or actors. By all means develop and encourage our specialised schools 
of music. They have a great tradition; they have done and are still 
doing magnificent work, and one of the results which they have already 
produced is that we are no longer obliged to look to our Continental 
neighbours for executive and creative artists, that our own players 
and singers and our own composers can hold their own against any 
rival in the world. But still more important, and at any rate more 
germane to this present paper, is the recognition of music as an essen- 
tial part of that liberal education which we are endeavouring to bestow 
upon all citizens throughout the country, and it is in this that the 
most remarkable advance is now being made. Our public schools, 
which half a century ago treated music as an unpopular alternative 
to cricket, have now begun to find a place for it, if not always in the 
curriculum, at any rate in the corporate life. The old days of the 
visiting music master, shy, embarrassed, probably a foreigner, ill at 
ease in Common Room, hardly counting as a member of the staff, have 
now been replaced by a more genial and hospitable system, by which 
the school music is placed in the hands of a well-educated and genial 
colleague who can mix with his fellows on equal terms and is as sure 
of a welcome as any among them. The school concerts are more 
numerous and of far higher quality than they were in the old days, 
and in many schools they are prefaced by explanatory lectures on the 
more elaborate or recondite works performed. Most of all, perhaps, 
is the change noticeable at Oxford and Cambridge, which have become 
radiating centres of musical activity and are sending out every year 
