Nature and Art, November 1, 18G6.] 
MUSIC AT HOME. 
189 
black or brown sand on the surface, but an uniform 
subsoil of chalk. 
My neighbours’ lupines have long since been 
ploughed up as failures. 
My own farm manager shared the impulse, and 
got leave to try a little bit (about half a.n acre) with 
the injunctions aforesaid. The plot he selected had 
generally 8 or 10 inches of blackish sand above the 
chalk, but the plough occasionally grazes the chalk 
rubble. The plants sown in May generally came up 
well, but, as generally, turned yellow, got stunted, 
sickened, and often died. Since, however, the crop 
was sown for the sake of experiment, not profit, it 
was left standing, to see what would come of it. 
When I looked at the plot in the end of J une, I 
remarked, at the further part from where I stood, 
two or three narrow streaks of a dark green hue, 
which, from their dissimilarity to the rest, I mis- 
took at that distance for couch-grass. When set 
right on this head, I said, “Then, depend upon it, 
these are narrow veins of deep sand ;” and the spade 
next morning showed that I was right, going down 
three feet through sand at those spots without reach- 
ing the bottom of it. 
Experience in trenching ground for plantations 
had previously called my attention to those sandy 
streaks which fill narrow parallel channels, pro- 
bably the last puny erasions made by the once 
mighty waters as they receded from the great 
marine formation of the chalk. The tall specimen 
in flower was gathered Sept. Gth, from one of these 
sand-streaks ; dwarf, sickly, half-dead specimens, 
such as those which accompany it, may be pulled 
up all over the field, even within one or two feet of 
their well-grown kindred ; yet, to judge by the. 
surface, the whole field is one of black sand.'"' 
These illustrations will, I think, set forth better 
than words can do, the great antipathy which this 
plant seems to have for chalk, either as a subsoil 
or as forming a very slight admixture iti its seed- 
bed. Such great sensitiveness is generally an attri- 
bute of animal rather than of vegetable life, and, 
among animals, belongs rather to the higher than 
the lower classes ; and further, to the more refined 
type rather than to the more hardy, homely tribes 
of the highest of animals — man. Yet this offshoot 
of the German Flora, which came to us with a 
character for “ rusticity,” as the French call it — as 
a sort of maid-of-all-work for the poor-land farmer 
— without finery, without “ die Englische whims ” 
(vagaries which, according to our German neigh- 
bours, none but the native word can adequately 
represent), turns out, in respect of chalk, to be as 
sensitive as any fine lady, — nay, she might possibly 
stand even Hans Andersen’s “ Princess-test,” and 
be discomposed if one single pilule of chalk were 
inserted three or four inches deep in her bed. 
# Small pockets of remarkable depths in comparison with 
their diameter, were in like manner scooped out of the 
chalk in places by the eddy of these waters, and similarly 
filled up. The black sand is, probably, a later and indepen- 
dent deposit. 
MUSIC AT HOME. 
M P. ALFItED MELLON holds at the present 
time undisputed sovereignty over musical 
London. Opposition is temporarily defunct, orches- 
tral conductors are still out of town, and the stars 
of the vocal hemisphere wander in touring troupes 
through the pleasant places which lie between 
the North Foreland and Penzance. Even as Alex- 
ander Selkirk was undisturbed by any rival 
claimant of tropical territory, the king of the Pro- 
menaders looks abroad, and finds the concert field 
his own. It is true the black-leaded minstrels of 
Christy still ask their doleful riddles, still sing 
their dismal songs, and still bewilder the public 
with contradictory declarations of legitimacy. Very 
small concerts are also occasionally heard of in very 
large suburbs ; but these fitful gleams merely serve 
to make the succeeding gloom more profound, and, 
excepting at Covent Garden, Euterpe sleeps soundly 
under the veil she put on at the close of the season. 
No mistaken individual ventures upon a short term 
of English Opera ; no five thousand school children 
sing the good old minim psalm tunes in the Handel 
Orchestra; and no chosen “six hundred” lull sub- 
scribers to sleep with the Messiah, the Creation, and 
Elijah in wearying succession. 
Music must have its vagaries, and Euterpe afore- 
said no sooner breathes freely after wrestling with 
one nightmare, than she is called upon to gather up 
her classical drapery and do battle against some other 
apparition. Audiences, that is to say, the shilling 
section thereof, tire of adult performers, and require 
the occasional stimulant of a juvenile phenomenon. 
That questionable blessing is always forthcoming ; 
and the noble British public is forthwith moved to 
extravagant demonstrations of delight in honour of 
mediocrity in short petticoats, or in boyish habili- 
ments, as the case may be. One phenemenon un- 
fortunately makes many, and, after a sensation of 
this undesirable kind, we must be prepared to find 
specimens of musical precocity springing up on all 
sides. Precocious talent is all very well in its 
way, but is better adapted for exhibition in family 
or private circles than in public assemblages. A 
certain amount of rawness and crudity is to be 
reasonably anticipated in the performances of 
juvenile prodigies : but it is none the more pleasant 
to hear when the prodigy takes some unfortunate 
classic in hand, and noisily pounds all the soul out 
of his music on a “concert grand.” It is certainly 
neither unfair nor inopportune to ask how the 
dignity of sterling music can be upheld in the ex- 
hibitions made by modern juvenile pianistes or 
pianists of the present day 1 In the compositions 
of Beethoven, Mozart, or Mendelssohn, what can 
