and sonorous phrases about it, and to mistake them for sense. Wagner in his letter to M. Villot-where he gives a popular account marked by great literary ability of his theory of opera--speaks of the impossibility that the hearing of a symphonic piece of music should entirely silence the persistent and distracting question 'Why?' which we are constrained to ask. When I first read this quickly through, it seemed to me to express a view which might be entertained or rejected; for my own part, though often finding the 'Why' a most real and oppressive question in some music where there seems no necessity for the notes to go one way more than another, I am not conscious of it in music which seems to me utterly beautiful: but I thought Wagner's experience might be different, and that in accordance with it he was perfectly right to suggest alliance with drama as the way to silence the importunate question; because in his own words 'the dramatic interest raises the sympathetic sentiments of the spectator to a state of ecstasy where he forgets that fatal "Why," and so on. So far then apparently so good. But a few pages further on I found the following paragraph :

The interest in Lohengrin rests entirely upon a process in the heart of Elsa, which touches all the secrets of the soul-the duration of a charm that spreads with convincing truth a wonderful happiness over all surroundings, depends entirely upon her refraining from the question' Whence ?'-the question bursts like a cry of despair from the deep anguish of a woman's heart, and the charm has vanished. You divine how strangely this tragical 'Whence ?' coincides with the theoretical Why?' of which I have been speaking!

I was somewhat staggered by this, as the comparison seemed to confound the discomfort caused by prolonged speculative failure in impossible regions with that caused by unsatisfied curiosity about an external detail. The 'Why?' which we may ask during an instrumental performance is a continuous questioning as to the course and value and upshot of something which is not bound together and rendered intelligible by ordinary laws of logical coherence. Now if Elsa were a profound psychological study of a woman who, while in happy circumstances, was driven by her nature to be always examining and doubting the grounds of her happiness, and who was for ever attempting to read the riddle of her hourly life by getting to some imaginary external standpoint, there might be some reason in comparing her to a person whose pleasure in a symphony is dimmed and distorted by side-questions as to the secret of the charm and the internal necessities of the structure, and by a vain longing to seize the intangible or to get behind his impressions and see what they are made of; and such a character, though impossible in an opera, might in itself be interesting. But Wagner's Elsa has no secret selfquestionings at all; she simply wishes, with female curiosity, to know an external fact which she has been told not to ask about, and in the external fact itself and the prohibition there is no more significance

than if she had been told not to look out a particular word in the dictionary. So far this may seem rather a criticism of the dramatic qualities of the particular play than of a confusion in thought about music; but reverting to the first passage by the new light (or darkness) cast on it by the second, I found it had received my modified assent only because I had imagined the subject of the 'Why?' to be something quite different from what Wagner himself meant. I had thought the importunate question to be the natural one in an art which is peculiar in dealing with no external realities, and to be concerned with the points mentioned above and the import of the presentation—to be, in fact, the hopeless attempt of an individual to analyse and translate in his own person, and with no appeal to anything outside his own organism, impressions which to the consciousness are ultimate, and whose depth depends on countless accumulations of experience and association in the race. But I saw on reperusal that the question was one we were supposed to ask ourselves in the presence of any impressive phenomenon. Now I do not know of any such question, unless it be the utterly worn and barren one (which after all is less liable to distress the mind when occupied with impressive phenomena than at other times) as to the meaning and object of existence. When the question leaves the metaphysical region, and is changed from 'Why do I and this object exist?' to 'Why does this object impress me as it does?' it can almost always be approximately answered. In the case of painting, for instance, though there remains an unanalysable element, still as the subject is independently comprehensible, and the elements in it are objects independently known, the main interest presents no problem to the mind. In the admiration of a landscape, though the elements of Mr. Spencer's excellent evolutional explanation can only dimly be brought into consciousness, the main acts of imagination are quite simple and intelligible. The peculiarity of music (as I must repeat ad nauseam) lies in the isolation of the pleasure it gives from life and social conditions, and in the extreme obscurity and remoteness of its first existence and gathering associations. This gives it a real 'why' of its own, which happily is often and often swallowed up and forgotten in the supremeness and completeness of its best utterances. But Wagner's Why?' which he considers appropriate in the presence of any impressive phenomenon, is a mere metaphysical puzzle, and has no connection with the musical difficulty to which his proposed satisfaction applies. Curiosity on such points may indeed be as idle and fruitless as Elsa's; but this was certainly not the rapprochement intended. I believe that Wagner, like every one who has thought about music, has been conscious of a certain mental reaction involved in the exercise of following a train of unique emotions, but that he has not perceived the fact of its being peculiar to music, much less the rationale of the peculiarity; so that his mind has simply got into a fog over his

'discovery of causality,' till he has confused the quite special feeling with a general bewilderment as to the grounds of the universe, with the result that his proposed solution of the difficulty in the case of music becomes entirely unmeaning. It seems easy to connect such reasonings with the kind of habit of mind which would be likely to attach factitious profundity and dramatic interest to the main incident in Elsa's history, and to imagine in so shapeless a fragment as the libretto of Lohengrin a deep and serious import.

I hope that in this discussion I have shown some reason to believe that, if the functions of musical criticism are limited, so also is its necessity, and that the grounds which preclude verbal interpretation of the art lie at the root of its wide comprehensibility and diffusion. If I cannot quite feel with Sir Thomas Browne that even that vulgar and tavern musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer,' it is because I believe in wide possibilities of better things and some of the foregoing considerations may at all events be capable of affording a stimulant and solace against those times of reaction when the absence of a human element in the perception of perfect beauty puzzles and oppresses the mind. If at such seasons a musician could find it in his heart to envy those who do not breathe the rarer air of pure artistic exaltation, and who realise their music through the interaction of some other mental or moral ideas-for these at all events keep their Pegasus where they can find him, which is a convenience for denizens of the earth-yet against the isolation of the actual spiritual experience he may set his knowledge of music's wide and ever-widening influence, and may find in its results, though not in its essence, the living interest of human sympathy.

It is very possible to generalise too widely on the importance of Art to individuals; for activity is a more essential condition of our happiness than beauty, and there are doubtless spheres where men may derive from their mere activities a constant stimulus and satisfaction, and in intellectual and spiritual conceptions may find an ideal life which leaves no sensible void. In the present constitution of society, however, the careers where a man may find himself thus situated must be acknowledged to be a small minority. The activities of most lives are in themselves dull and trivial, having little or nothing of vivid and changing interest, and no power of satisfying the imagination, leaving the mind moreover but little leisure to explore unknown worlds; while on the spiritual side there may be more of struggle than of peace. To such lives love of beauty is like water in the desert; and among the arts it is more especially the privilege of Music, that, penetrating where Nature's face is veiled, she can open the springs of this love to the poorest dwellers in the dingiest cities.

EDMUND GURNEY.

THE PUBLIC
PUBLIC INTEREST IN

AGRICULTURAL REFORM.

I.

In this article the word 'interest' will be used in two senses, distinct though cognate; the first expressive of concern felt, and the second of advantage pertaining. No confusion will arise from this inevitable use of the term in two of its meanings, both of which I desire to deal with, as the context will clearly show which is intended, even if, as is not likely, both have to be used in the same paragraph. It is my object to call attention to the fact that the public have a very great interest in agricultural reform, although they apparently feel so little interest in that important subject.

First, then, as to the concern which the public feel in agricultural reform. This, I take it, may be fairly measured by the concern. which they manifest. Let us test this in a few different ways.

The press in this country is usually acknowledged to give a fair indication of the degree of interest attaching to important questions in the mind of the public. Newspapers are published to sell, and their editors supply such reading matter as is believed to be most acceptable to the people who buy newspapers. Our great daily journals, metropolitan and provincial, are conducted with much energy, and no expense is spared by their proprietors in catering for public favour. The London dailies alone are sold by hundreds of thousands, and circulate in all parts of the country, including the most secluded rural districts. In some districts the provincial daily journals may have a larger circulation than their London rivals; but this is a consideration of no importance to the point which I am endeavouring to make clear, as no one will deny that the London daily papers circulate extensively in town and country, and amongst all classes of the people. What, then, do we gather as to the public interest in agricultural affairs from the extent to which those matters are noticed in the London daily papers? In reply it would be almost sufficient to give one illustration. More space is occupied in the pages of the great morning journals, with one exception, during the preparation for, and immediately after, the VOL. V.-No. 28.

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Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, in allusion to that one event, than is allotted during the whole year to agriculture in all its branches but that of market reports, which must be left out of the estimate. Probably this year will be an exception, as the seriously depressed condition of agriculture as a business has forced itself upon public attention, and the coming International Agricultural Show at Kilburn will also have occupied a great deal of newspaper space before it has ceased to be a subject for comment. If it were worth while to test the correctness of my estimate by a measurement of the columns of last year's London morning papers, with the exception of the Daily Chronicle, which devotes a column weekly to agricultural notes, I feel confident that it would hold good. And this proportion of press notice approximates, I fear, to the regard which the people at large pay to the two subjects respectively. The contest between eight young men from Oxford and eight from Cambridge probably does engage the attention of a larger number of people than the finest agriculture in the world does.

Again, accounts of the crimes and intrigues of the murderer Peace occupied more space in the metropolitan press than has ever been devoted to any single agricultural question in a single year since the great fight between Free Trade and Protection took place; while the trial of the impostor Orton probably employed the London compositors for more hours than they have been occupied in setting up agricultural 'copy' from that time to this. If we apply the same test to any two public events, the one agricultural and the other non-agricultural, the result will be equally decisive. Thus, a petty suburban race—a mere bookmakers' meeting-will have two or three columns devoted to it; when a meeting of the Farmers' Club or Central Chamber of Agriculture, at which important topics of agricultural economy or politics have been discussed, will be dismissed in a few lines of small type, or perhaps without any mention whatever.

Nor is this all, for agricultural topics appear to be considered of so little importance by the editors of London daily papers, that when they deign to bestow a leading article upon one of those subjects it commonly betrays more or less ignorance of the subject on the part of the writer, thus showing that specialists are not usually employed to deal with these as they are to deal with other subjects requiring special information.

Provincial daily and weekly journals of course give more attention to agricultural affairs, as many of them circulate chiefly amongst country readers; but only a few contain regular original contributions on agricultural topics, though, as some of these are so well served in this respect as greatly to enhance their attractiveness to country subscribers, one wonders that their example is not more. generally followed. In Ireland the land question is so much the question of the country that it is always a prominent subject of comment