REPORTS FROM THE SECTIONS. 283 
after happiness, its hope and despair, its tenderness, its love and 
hatred, its generosity and meanness, and so down to the everyday 
moods ‘and ections of indolence and vivacity, sullenness and 
good humour, &c. ; and thus it is that he alternately drags and 
beguiles us through all the infinite variety of his fancy. He must 
be a Proteus ready to assume all shapes—man, 
and to force from him his precious secrets. I admit, of course, 
that such an organization—one, I meets Se) ns in natural ts 
as well as in professional acquirements—is to be found 
all musicians ; some, indeed, having been reneriable for a few 
consigned to an inferior position in the pan peste of posterity. 
et us, however, take a good compnear of the day—say the cele- 
brated author of “Faust” pau of “Romeo and Juliet.” He 
commences an opera. One, two, perhaps three years of labour 
gatherings to which the movement of his own social life as a 
genius and a favourite drag him. He must listen to sickly ballads 
at these places, to insane opera-bouffe selections, to empty crashing 
military band music. He must answer silly journalist questions, 
submit well or badly to the real and the would-be aristocratic 
smiles and praises lavished on him ; perhaps even being hunted 
by some of those commercial firms seg order music by ‘the yard, 
he may find himself bound down to compose between hours, 
things which, good or bad, can add he! little = his renown. But 
all this time the true musician must carry about with him, in his 
head and in his heart, his whole mr “When smiling to 
life to these human passions, what are his materials? The most 
fugitive of all—sound—the mere vibrations of the air. But these 
fancies, in the rtion of his pe and of our individual 
musically seetlh ingdect and of our sympathy with him. Not 
to , however, let us say the composer has finished his score ; 
that is to say, about 1,500 pages large quarto size, sre covered 
with fanciful dots, lines, zig-zags, serpent-lo of cor- 
rection, and hieroglyphies of all sorts, expressing all ee has in him 
of talent or genius. As it stands now it is a one eho 
knows it? Nobody. air es of the initiated perhaps 
through that labyrinth, and catch a glinpo fs ats; but 
