Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924017583034 MOZART : \ A COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS READ BEFORE THE POSITIVIST SOCIETY OF LONDON, ON THE 24th of DECEMBER, 1882. BY VERNON LUSHINGTON. " Hesperus, that led tlie starry host." Milton. LONDON : REEVES AND TURNER, 196, STRANiy. 1883. ^N the 24th December, 1882 (22 Bichat 94), the Positivist Society of London held in Newton Hall (Pleur-de-Lys Courtj Fetter Lane) a musical commemoration of Mozaet, who stands in the Positivist Calendar the representative of Modern Music. Several portraits and other memorials of Mozart were exhibited : and under the leadership of Mr. Henry Holmes, the great Composer's String Quartet in C (dedicated to Haydn), and his String Quintet in G minor were performed. Between these pieces Mr. Vernon Lushington read the following ADDRESS ; ETWEEN the beautiful Quartet you have-^ just listened to, and the beautiful Quintet you will hear presently, I am commissioned to address you upon the purpose of our meeting. This iS a Religious Commemoration of Mozaet by our Positivist Community. It is, as I hope you feel, not the less but the more religious for its delightful appeal to your musical feeling : — surely far the more, for in that music we may greet the very spirit of the glorious artist who gave it us, and whom we are met to celebrate. It should bind together his soul and ours. We are therefore very grateful to all who by their various help have enabled us as a body thus 4 to honour Mozart, though on a very modest scale, yet in the right and happy way. In preparing this address, I had to consider with reference to my limits of time, whether I would recount to you the life of Mozart. It is a most interesting subject, most triumphant, most pathetic, but I said " No — that can be found elsewhere, especially in this admirable book, the Biography by the late Edward Holmes. Here in this place I must speak to them of Mozart's historic position, I must con- nect him with the Past and the Future, and make plain, if I can, the Positivist view of the oflBce of Art in civilization." With all else which we call Civilization, we have received from the Past the beautiful Arts which address the mind and heart through the eye and ear. You enjoy these, no doubt; you value them : — but do you feel the religious value of their services ? I don't mean merely their special service in adorning religious ceremonies ; I mean the religious value of their general services to Humanity. In a measure I am sure you do feel it. Yet I venture to say, you do not feel it enough. You cannot. For, to begin with. Art and Religion are now regarded by almost all as quite separate things. This on the speculative side. And on the practical side, though we modern peoples are so rich in money, and rich in many sciences, and rich in multifarious industries and appliances, and rich in many kinds of literature ; very rich too in luxuries, and at least as rich as our forefathers, so we fancy, in affection ; and though indisputable signs of brilliant aesthetic power appear amongst us here and there, yet in one great province at least of Art, we are very poor and hare : — which is the best possible proof we don't care enough for it. We are content with vulgar ugliness, and manufacture it wholesale ; and even the highest education in the land, here or elsewhere, is wholly unconcerned at it. For the last 200 years and more, all the delightful Arts which appeal to the eye — Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, beautiful simple dress, beautiful things for the common familiar use of the people — all these Arts, with very few exceptions, have in every country of the West languished and even become. corrupt. Any walk in London streets should convince you of this. Nay, more, our modern civilization has destroyed countless treasures of the Art of the Past, and wherever it goes, spontaneously destroys them, even in the far Bast. This is a most sorrowful fact, not nearly enough appreciated. But now, with this decline in what I may call for brevity Pictorial Art, there has been throughout the "West in the same period a wonderful growth of Music, — and in the last hundred years there has been an extra- ordinary uprising also in ardent Poetry, with some remark- able Painting of a poetic aim. These had great antecedents : but Music, as we know it, may even be called a modern Art, a special charm of modern life. What, I ask, is the explanation of this strange contradiction — this naked ugliness and sweet charm, this progress and poverty, side by side ? We touch here the very mainspring of the modern enigma. Nothing but a just and sympathetic understanding of the Past can explain it. Modem CiviKzation issues direct from Mediaeval Civiliza- tion. Fierce and very turbulent as that time in some respects certainly was, and often therefore abounding in human suffering, yet it is a precious truth that Catholic and Feudal institutions everywhere produced a beautiful develop- ment of all the personal affections. And as a consequence of that and of their proper orderliness and dignity, these social formations drew to themselves all the Arts of Beauty, directing them for the most part to the adornment of public life. This is especially true of the Catholic Church. The Church did not honour artists or Art : — No ! that its doctrine forbade, but through the wisdom of the priesthood it employed them. Accordingly cathedrals, monasteries, and even parochial churches became free and open treasure- houses of all the Arts — including Music — all dedicated to a worship which drew under its wings both the common and the more moving incidents of both domestic and public life. It is difficult, because so strange to us, to conceive the happy and gentle influence on the manners of the people of this familiar presence of beauty wrought by human skill; yet you are surely feeling the benefits of it to this hour. Of purely Mediseval Music none or hardly any has remained to us : but Dante's poem abundantly witnesses to the constant and lovely office of Music in worship. So beautiful even did Music seem that it was made the chief occupation in Heaven. Dante also tells us of the vocal art of his friend Casella, who was both a composer and singer, that it stilled in him every desire ; and he took care to meet and embrace Oasella in Purgatory, and made him sing there one of his love canzonets, though that brought them both and other admiring souls into trouble with old Cato, the stern warder — in the circumstances a proper piece of Puritan discipline. There was also much singing of love- songs in feudal courts. Chaucer describes his young squire as singing and fluting all the day. Chivalry, which in its brief but brilliant career was the joint product of Catholicism and Feudalism at their very best, and as such was inspired through and through with the worship of women, is the well-head of Modern Art of every kind. But in the beginning of the fourteenth century both Catholicism and Feudalism were showing decisive signs of decay. They were in fact slowly approaching towards the end of their intellectual and political capacity ; and they were, in the long run, by their very nature, unable to cope with or assimilate the new social forces — 'so diverse from themselves — that were arising, feeble as yet, but full of youthful ardour, — Science and Industrialism. For a long while all held on together, mutually influencing one another : and by their joint action — Catholicism contributing feeling and motive, and Modern Intellect expansive thought and progressive skill — this became the richest period of what is commonly called Mediseval Art. Dante represents its supreme triumph in Poetry ; and there was a long line of admirable painters and sculptors, leading up to Raphael and Miphael Angelo. In Music also, both religious and secular, there was progress, though not so marked. Through the agency of all this most truly gracious Art, diffused through Christendom — and centred, let me again repeat, whether Music, Painting, or Poetry, in the honour of feminine beauty and dignity — there was being laid up for the coming conflict a precious store, not of arms, but of lofty thought, and ennobling pleasure, and beautiful human feeling and affection in many hearts. Beside all the dij'ect effects, I include all the indirect effects, which, though we cannot measure or trace them, we may yet surely know by experience, just as we know the influence of home associations on our whole being. At last came the crash — the so-called Reformation. Catholicism was now thoroughly undermined; Feuda:lism also ; and they and the modern forces were thenceforth at war ! Catholicism was divided, never to re-unite ; and no new faith being ready to take its place, the human mind entered upon a period of open discord. There was a general insurrection of the Present against the Past, and of the Intellect against the Heart. This conflict continues still. It is the characteristic and all-pervading feature of Modern Civilization. Painful — aye, cruelly painful and wasteful as this spiritual discord is, we may see that it was in the main unavoidable, as a final crisis, without which could not be effected the vast intellectual change which had been so long preparing, the transition from theological to human faith. After many conflicts. Science and Industry have been, though not yet completely, yet very decisively victorious over their older antagonists. Theology and Warfare, as for human progress it was very necessary they should be. You know how Positivism, not arbitrarily, but by the law of its own being, accepts, in- corporates, and carries forward both. Bidding good-bye to Theology, yet claiming the inheritance of all the good that Theology did, and the inheritance of the entire Past, Positivism makes Science its adamantine basis, and declares the life of Pacific Industry the universal destiny. But neither of these modern forces showed any sympathy with the Art that had preceded. How should they when that Art was Catholic ? No, they and their temporary allies,. Protestantism and Metaphysic, laid axe and fire, and — more ruinous still — corroding thought, to the works of beauty that 8 held of Catholicism, as all Pictorial Art did, to Architecture most of all : — and as to what remained, they soon got to despise and neglect it. Science and Modern Industry, I say, have grown up indifferent to Pictorial Art, and even hostile to it ; and what is more, all the Churches, including the Catholic Church itself, have grown indifferent to it too, in any honourable sense of the word Art, for they all are penetrated with modem scepticism. Such Pictorial Art also as continued, when the splendour of the last great school of Venice had faded, became — though often skilful — in a short while either cold and formal, pedantic, or else feebly sentimental, and lived upon petty or inhuman sub- jects ; it was divorced from religion and grand thought of any kind. Poetry, as a freer, less material Art, fared better for a time. Catholic Poetry flourished nobly for a brief while in Catholic Spain and Catholic Italy. I do but name Cervantes and Calderon, Ariosto and Tasso ; and France, Catholic, yet permeated with modern thought, produced its Comeille and Moliere, and others ; and here, in Protestant England, we had in Shakespeare,^ a strange magnificent compound of Mediaeval manners, modern intellect, and glorious human sympathy, whose " touch of nature makes the whole world kin." But since Milton, himself perhaps the loftiest example of purely Protestant Art, English and all other poetry degene- rated too in poetic quality, because of the religious inter- regnum : it became almost purely intellectual — highly polished, no doubt, but generally pedantic, and even heart- less, or else sentimental ; at best second-rate ; and so re- mained — though we should not fail to notice the rise of Prose Eomance — until the grand popular uprising marked by the French Revolution, but fully prepared by modern speculation, when Poetry, here and elsewhere, again put forth her glorious power, expanding now into the widest human subjects and stirred with profound passion, but for the most part in revolutionary mood, her back upon the old religions, her face towards the new. 9 But now as to Music. — Music had held of Catholicism, but not so visibly and tangibly as Pictorial Art or even Poetry. It had not been developed to anything like the same extent. Though in one sense so exquisitely articulate, in another sense its sounds were inarticulate : they went forth into the impalpable air, conveying mysterious delight- ful messages to the heart, but seeming to utter no doctrine. Music thus, not altogether, but in a large measure, evaded the injurious conflict. And so escaping, it found its way and won its way. It was far from being unintellectual, it became more and more intellectual, even strikingly so, but it received and blended almost impartially thought from every quarter, absorbed it, and gave it forth in sweet forms that ex- pressed no offence. Some did quarrel with it, we know ; but none but the most ultra-bigot could quarrel with it long, for Music quarrelled with none. It gave itself to both sides, to Catholics and Humanists chiefly, but also in some measure to Protestants : it gave itself gladly to all, to religious life and secular life, to worship and pleasure, to kings and nobles, then and for long its chief natural patrons, to the new class of the bourgeoisie, and in some small degree to the now uncared for, yet ever advancing people. Gloriously, yet 80 peacefully, Music stood in the, gap, not filling it by any means, I grant — -far from that — -but moderating the conflict, supplying to many an imaginative interest in lieu of carnal pleasure or worldly care, elevating, soothing, amusing ; breathing, wherever it might reach, for such was its happy nature, though of course in very various degrees, a spirit of order and gentleness and good fellowship. Not that I would deny that it often ministered to vain and idle display, or was itself sometimes infected with the revolu- tionary vice of vanity J but its main work was as Ihave stated. To this humanizing movement all the nations of the West contributed. Besides the national songs of all countries, Germany, Prance, and Sweden gave their psalms and hymns, and the Netherlands, England, Italy, and Spain their sweet madrigals. Greater efforts followed, especially in the direction of dramatic music and systematic harmony. But 10 if we except a few etninent names, such as Lulli in France, and Purcell in England, and especially the very great names of Bach, Handel, and Gluck, the chief home of musical genius until the middle of the eighteenth century was in the cities of Italy — Italy, the traditional abode of all the Arts, the centre of Catholic worship, and at the same time the most ardent school of the Humanists. Accordingly there we find an astonishing development of musical skill and invention in works now mainly forgotten, in Masses, Oratorios, Lyric Songs, Chamber Music, and Musical Dramas. Nor must we forget the exquisite discipline by Italian masters of the vocalizing Art, or the perfecting of stringed instruments by Stradivari and his colleagues, or the creation of the piano- forte, for that too was an Italian invention. But Italy, sacrificed to the Papacy, had long been falling into general arrear : the leadership of general thought had long passed away from her to France, and now after many triumphs, the primacy in Music passed also, but to Germany. If I were to hazard a reason for this change, it would be that France was too absorbed in the intellectual struggle, and Catholic Germany, as Italy's nearest neighbour, naturally and quietly took up the new musical advance. Be this as it may, in the middle of the eighteenth century, so very great an European epoch in many respects, in Philosophy, Science, and Industrial Enterprise, but when almost all Art but Music seemed everywhere cold and lifeless, and official religion was obviously in putrescent corruption, and when the many were immersed in slavish labour, and the few inmere fugitive pleasure, then it was that Mozaet was given to the world in South Germany, 27th January, 1756. In faith and feeling Mozart was a true Catholic, but spontaneously of the most generous type : he never misddled with intellec- tual or political speculation, Music and Life were to him enough. Partly from his own benign nature, and partly from the nature of the society he had to serve, but partly also be- cause he had never consciously wrestled with the Sphinx- Enigma of the Eevolution, he did not feel called to express, often or with utmost force. Conflict, or the Sublime or the 11 Terrible : — a majestic provincej though sometimes almost inhaman. In brilliant, beautiful energy Mozart did abound, but it was with him only occasionally that " The beard and the hair of the river-god were Seen in the tori-ent's sweep." But this apart, he was gifted, musically speaking, with almost an universal genius : — equal to every demand, whether of worship, or imagination, or romantic pathos, or sweet innocent gaiety, or varied dramatic action : — a profuse creator and constructor : and, over aU, as Artist and man, he had such a sovereign quality of spiritual graciousness that in his every work, I had almost said in his every liiie, may be read, " Write me as one who loves his fellow-men." This was Mozart's own feeling, even specially his, and yet I must call it Catholic and Chivalric feeling of the most precious kind, blending with modern pacific sympathies . Such was the sweet humane discipline which formed his very nature, thatMozart's harmonious soul might be described, I think, as royally moving in the great Temperate Zone of the world, rich with mountain, and river, and lake, and sea, and fertile sunny lands, and golden harvests, and noble cities, not without its clouds and storms, and not.without many a mood of sorrow, but in the main supremely orderly, bright with various beauty, and glowing with human pleasure. The blazing Tropics were for him generally far off: with the Arctic and Antarctic regions he had nothing to do at all. Such and so great was his poetic genius, and such also and no less, as all musicians testify, was his musical knowledge and skill. The two things cannot be dissociated : all his work, from his simple eloquent phrase to the endowment of the orchestra with new and varied life, was the joint product of both. But from his earliest childhood — and what a lovely and brilliant childhood it was ! — he had been, under the guidance of his admirable father, a profound student of his Art : and his industry was incom- parable. Of that, this book, — the mere Thematic Catalogue of his works — is the best proof. Would for Mozart's dear sake and ours that it had been shorter, that he had been spared some of his incessant labour on mere works of 12 occasion, and had had, as he so much longed for, the joy of giving us yet more masterpieces ! This is what Mozart him self wrote on this subject in a letter, precious on many accounts, which he addressed to a worthy Baron, an admirer of his, who with some music of his own to criticise had sent him a present of wine : — " To him who told you that I am growing idle I request you sincerely (and a Baron may well do such a thing) to give him a good box on the ear. How gladly would I work and work, if it were only left me to write always such music as I please, and as I can write ; such, I mean to say, as I myself set some value upon. Thus I composed three weeks ago an orchestral symphony, and by to-morrow's post I write again to HoflFmeister (the music-seller) to offer him three pianoforte quatuors, supposing that he is able to pay. heavens ! were I a wealthy man, I would say, ' Mozart, compose what you please, and as well as you can, but till you offer me something finished, you shall not get a single kreutzer. I'll buy of you every MS., and you shall not be obliged to go about and offer it for sale like a hawker.' Good God, how sad all this makes me ! " Well, this was so, but by title alike of genius and know- ledge Mozart entered as legitimate heir into the full inheri- tance of his predecessors. He died at Vienna on the 5th of December, 1791, but in his short life of hardly thirty-six years he gave a new and splendid impulse to Musical Art, so that now he is justly to be considered the Father of Modern Music — above all, of the Modern Orchestra and Modern Musical Drama. A mighty development ensued in every direction, powerfully aided, be it observed, by the new intellectual and emotional life of the West. What glorious names have we had since ! names from all countries, but especially Italian names, such as Cherubini, Bellini, Rossini ; and German names, beginning with Haydn, who was Mozart's honoured master, and yet became his admiring disciple, and after Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Spohr, Weber, Mendelssohn, Schumann — masters of all the forms of Modern Music, and representing the full fusion of modern 13 intellect and modern feeling with the most poetic musical skill. They all hold of Mozart; not least the commanding originality and superb grandeur of Beethoven himself: did he not find Mozart and all his rich improvements to his hand ? Ay^ and his instructed players and auditors, though they wanted yet more instructing ? Perhaps I might venture to add, that the increased intellectual element since Mozart's time has not been an unmixed gain. We have something too much of intellect in Modern Music, too much extravagance and spiritual unrest, so that here too as in every province of modern life the supreme need, and a high and difficult aim it is, is a better simplicity. As a wondrous and most moving performer on Pianoforte and Organ, Mozart was an inspiring example to his genera- tion. How I wish I could recount some of the delightful anecdotes on this head, or that I could speak to you at large of his personal character as an artist ! Time, however, will only permit me to name his extraordinarily afiectionate na- ture, not quite hard enough for the hard world in which he found himself, his unfailing generosity to his brother artists, and his genial independence towards his great patrons. But all such triumphant achievements and private virtues are but beautiful additions to his grand historical position as a musical author. He was eminent in every species of com- position, whether mass or symphony, instrumental concerted music, sonata, or song, but above all in opera. His musical greatness is all represented, and naturally assembled in his Dramas; they are his Capital Cities. There will be found in glorious company his enchanting melody, his new and rich harmonies, his arch but ever graceful dramatic expres- sion, his daedal orchestration. The stories of his most famous operas were of little interest, except for their lively situations, which, of course, Mozart turned to the happiest account. They were, in truth, rather dissolute stories of a corrupt aristocratic life, very characteristic of the time. How different from Beethoven, who in his one opera glorified the devotion of a heroic wife, and with it glorified also social martyrdom, and the putting 14 down of unjust powerj and even the advent of general happiness ! I mention this^ only to note once more how- Beethoven came after Mozart and after the great Revolution. But now I wish to notice that in perfectly satisfying the dramatic requirements of his characters, and apparently — shall I say ? — not overstepping them, Mozart did in truth, and as all must feel, most beautifully transcend them. In any other Art this would have been undue exaggeration, and therefore unsatisfactory. But Mozart availed himself of the privilege, which in such high degree belongs only to Music because of its inarticulate character, for thereby Music, though never losing touch of reality, more than any other Art by the waving of her wand transports us into the ideal world. To take the most familiar instances, the love-songs of Oherubino inthe"Nozze di Figaro "are love-songs that suit Oherubino, the gay young page, to perfection, and yet such is the magic skill, they breathe the most tender passion that truest lover, whether young mediaeval knight or modern youth, might envy : and the songs in the same play of the Countess — no heroine — expressing the temporary loss of her good-for- nothing husband's preference — love, I won't call it — might with other words each form a Catholic anthem, yet the hearer feels no incongruity, but pure delight. And so in the tragic and fantastic parts of "Don Giovanni" the presence of beauty never leaves us. " 'Tis tlie melodious hue of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain Which humanize and harmonize the strain." And so everywhere. I linger upon the word beauty, I repeat it. For "beauty truly blent" — musical beauty, which yet was intellectual and moral beauty, is the pre- dominant quality of this consummate artist. His master- pieces — and they are many — bear the seal of radiant and perfect Beauty, and as such they must be precious for ever. Around his ever-youthful head is an eternal Rainbow. My praise of Mozart I know is feeble, because my in- sufficient knowledge makes it too vague. Let me therefore 15 justify what I have said by the opinion which the great and generous Haydn spontaneously expressed while Mozart was yet living, in a letter to the manager of the Opera House at Prague : — " Were it possible," he wrote, "that I could impress every friend of Music, particularly among the great, with that deep musical intelligence of the inimitable works of Mozart — that emotion of the soul with which they affect me, and in which I both comprehend and feel them — the nations would con- tend together for the possession of such a gem." The nations did not do so : but Mozart remains to Humanity. Now we would have you feel the religious value of all these services of Mozart and Modern Music. Not that for a moment we would put the Fine Arts on a solitary pinnacle in independence of the domestic affections and civic virtues. Art for Art's sake, is no doctrine of ours. Any such claim is extravagant and immoral, and any corresponding attempt must end in the temporary degeneracy of the Arts themselves, as the decline of Greek civilization shows, and the Eenaissance movement too, and many sad individual instances. , But these Arts are not adverse to morality, as the Puritans thought; or effeminate, as some have thought; or insignificant, as many still think: — they have been and they may be, for they essentially are, and this without departing from their office of delight, but in the very fulfilling of it, the true helpers of those virtues and affections ; and without them civilized life as a whole cannot but be imperfect, and even coarse and sad, as so much of modern life with all its brilliancy still is. It is not a small thing that our laborious peoples have neither in their labour nor in their leisure any free scope for their imaginative faculties. It is a great and dangerous privation, contributing in large degree to their degrading vices. With how many does Drink take the place of Poetry ! Drink that lifts the poor wretch for a brief hour out of the vile present into a selfish fool's paradise, to bring him back, and so soon, into a yet viler reality. But Music with all true Art is spontaneously religious. It slides into 16 the soul of simple and learned, confirming their human faith and animating their human love. It may confirm our faith even in the material order, for Music rests invisibly on mathematical and physical, as well as biological laws, which have now been admirably explored ; but far more does it confirm our faith in human nature, in the power of man to triumph over matter, and in the essential dignity and interest of human feeling, and in the free gifts flowing to us out of the Past: — all this, uniting with our pleasure, must or it is indeed our fault, must animate our love. To use the old phrase. Music is one of the means of grace. Mozart and his colleagues, then, by their delightful works rendered a true religious service to Humanity. They carried on the imaginative feelings that had issued from Catholicism and Chivalry; they kept faithful to the better Past, blending it with the better Present : they handed on a civilizing beauty from class to class, and from age to age ; in the critical period they softened the acrid passions of the conflict, and brightened the grey cold aspects of modem material life, and they established for all time a lovely Art, which may yet help to make modern industrial and, scientific Civilization no longer " harsh or crabbed, but musical as was Apollo's lute.-" Now to all this, modern Catholicism and Protestantism, as such, may be quite indifierent, as in fact we now see they practically are. Not one of all the Christian Churches celebrates or can celebrate Mozart ; and as little do they relish historical explanation, for both the one and the other speak to them alike of their own past decline and predestined downfall. Quite otherwise is it with the Eeligion of Humanity, which affirms the supremacy of Feeling, and cherishes continuity, and cares for human happiness in every form, and cares for the means too, and above all cares for the men who produce it. It accepts, and again not ■capriciously or sentimentally, but as of course and by the law of its being and yet rejoicingly, all these services, even the most secular, and all true Art, as indispensable and permanent elements of itself. It unites once more Art to Eeligion and Eeligion to Art. One only force of similar 17 kind it recognizes as greater than Art — the gracious oflBces of all Good Women. I have already touched upon the special qualifications of Music for this her sacred and happy task, but not enough. It is necessary to point out that Music is above all the Social Art, the Art for family and civic and religions gatherings : it is therefore beautifully adapted to qualify City Life, which Modern Industry imposes upon its myriad populations. Moreover, though it can express all feelings, and not least the melancholy individual passion which some moderns are so fond of, its general tone is gladness. Music also is in one sense the most universal Art. Poetry speaks a national language j and the works of Architecture and Painting are necessarily local, — conditions from which they draw some of their most impressive and affectionate qualities. But the language of Music is universal, and by the craft of Gutenberg it flies on paper wings over the world, so that to give a commonplace example, not long ago, I, anBnglishman, heard trolled forth by Italian voices in the Italian night one of the stirring choruses composed by the Frenchman Gounod for the German poem of Faust. What a source of universal sympathy lies here ! It grieves me to contrast with this the fact that in 1870 when the French and Germans were going to war, Wagner issued a pamphlet to extol Beethoven's genius at the expense of French civilization — in fact, to abase France, making Beethoven not the uniter, but the divider of ■ nations. For such conduct there is but one word — Degra- dation. It is one proof mor# of the anarchy into which the most powerful intellects fall for the want of a human religion. Let us beware, however, of boasting overmuch of the universality of modern Musical Art. Holding Mozart by the hand, let us ask ourselves the question. Has this Art reached the people ? In one sense I gladly grant it has. It is not merely they who are privileged to hear or see who profit by Art. Something — for so is man linked to his brother man — something of the happy influence they may receive, they necessarily communicate to others. Neverthe- less, hearing, seeing, doing, and that familiarly, are indis- 18 pensable conditions for effectually appropriating what the Arts of Beauty have to give ; indeed for doing so abundantly several generations are necessary. In this Sense Music has not reached the people : in some respects it has even receded. Perhaps it is safe to say that of all the music Mozart ever wrote, nine-tenths of the English people, for instance, have not heard a single note. Now without com- plaining too much of past negligence, nay, admitting that it was, as Mozart's life might show, a very uphill effort to get so far, let us, still holding his hand, fortify in ourselves this noble aim amongst others, to bring Music and all the beautiful Arts to the people. For Positivism would do this, not spasmodically, but with calm and persistent resolve ; because systematically. Upon our banner is inscribed Gomte's ener- getic and masterly phrase " Incorporation of the Proletariate into Society," which means admission of the people to the fuU benefits of Civilization. They have long, long, been kept without, they are now to be brought within, and as very members. Not that all the good things of life are to be shared oiit equally at the capstan-head ; — that is utopian, anarchic : but a better ordering of our industrial life and a better distribution and use of wealth are indispensable, to be attained mainly by the moralization of opinion. But above all, all spiritual advantages are to be free and common to all, as Catholicism once taught and even tried : one faith and one worship for all, one education for all, and this to comprise not merely instruction in Science, but training in Poetry, and in the elements of Drawing and Singing : Art to be dedicated not merely to private enjoyment, but still more to public uses ; and Artists to be, for such they really are, as for type take Mozart, the honourable and honoured auxiliaries of the human Priesthood. Herewith one word more I conclude. Carlyle relates how at the battle of Dunbar, when at the dawn of day the Scotch Presbyterians had broken and fled, Cromwell halted the pursuit for a brief moment, and sang the 117th Psalm, " Praise the Lord all ye nations : " — and then, says Carlyle, " and n'ow to the chase again." A remarkable, but not a 19 singular instance of an appeal to Art — for it was Art^ reli- gious Art, — to inspire and spiritually control in the very crisis of a supreme practical effort. I say, to inspire and spiritually control; this, through all its ministrations, is the eternal office of Art. My part to-night has been very different. I have inter- posed — for so I was charged — I have interposed in a beauti- ful tribute of musical praise with some unmusical, mere spoken, and perhaps too didactic words. But it was for a rational purpose, to help you to see more clearly the larger services of Music and Art to Humanity, and to invite you to honour Mozart for his glorious part in that service, in the name and for the sake of Humanity, to which, whether we acknowledge it or not, we all belong. " And now to the chase again," by which, of course, I mean to listen, and not with the outward ear only, nor without deep gratitude, to our beloved Mozart's own bright and lovely strains. 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