of the laws of proportion, form, and colour, were more generally diffused among persons in the middle ranks.

After much consideration of the objections to a merely theoretical acquaintance with branches of knowledge which can only be mastered by practice, I am nevertheless persuaded that examination, especially for the middle ranks, whose period of mental training is limited, may with great advantage encourage attention to physical facts in their direct relation to the arts and to manufactures, and also to principles elicited by long discussion and criticism of the works of great masters. I confess I do not quite see my way as to the best method of dealing with these subjects as independent branches of an examination; but with a desire to draw closer the link between the arts and the other branches of education, I incline to an opinion which I throw out as a suggestion for your consideration, that some acquaintance with drawing and music should be asked for in the preliminary examination of all candidates, but not absolutely required; and that excellence in either should be allowed to count towards distinction in the schools of literature and science respectively, just as marks would be gained by excellence in reading and writing.

The claims of a talent for performance in the arts might be dealt with separately in the same way as prizes and scholarships are assigned in the Universities to poems and essays, and to particular branches of knowledge apart from the examinations required for degrees; but these are matters of detail, to which I refer only that I give more form and substance to the general questions on which I desire your independent opinion.

George Richmond, Esq.

Yours sincerely,

T. D. ACLAND, JUN.

P.S.-I may be permitted to add, that the fact of your opinions not being committed in favour of any particular school, except the tried schools of truth and labour, peculiarly qualify you to form a sound judgment on the subject, and one which is likely to command the respect of educated men who desire to help others to educate themselves. (See Mr. Richmond's Letter, p. 60.)

DEAR HULLAH,

Sprydoncote, Exeter, July 20th, 1857.

In the hope of drawing out your views about the right way of dealing with Music in Middle-Class Education, which any one who has seen you surrounded by three or four hundred of the middle ranks on Wednesday evenings may well think worth drawing out, I send

you a copy of a letter which I have addressed to one of your colleagues in the Exeter Examination on the Arts generally.

Though Music is one of the Fine Arts, it stands on a different footing from the others. All men have need of houses to live in, and of furniture, and therefore a large proportion of the middle classes in every country town in England are necessarily engaged in supplying their neighbours with what is beautiful or ugly in form; but although, as you have observed somewhere of nurseries, either noise or music is a necessity of human existence, the laws of sound do not affect branches of trade as extensively as those of form do. Music, therefore, must be upheld on other grounds.

I have long been convinced, and I think our training-schools have clearly established it as a fact, that in the education of those who are obliged to leave school early, Music can do what nothing else can do in so short a time towards giving accuracy and refinement of mind, as well as towards encouraging certain useful and agreeable habits of alertness, steadiness, and regard for others with whom we are acting.

In fact, I believe that a youth who has learned to take his part in an old service or madrigal, must have gone through (in two years, perhaps) a course of training which, in kind, if not in degree, resembles classical and mathematical teaching, and must have learned something of the principles of good taste as distinguished from vulgar display.

What I do not see clearly is how the results of this training are to be properly tested in the examination for the title of Associate in Arts. You can thoroughly test by questions on paper the clear knowledge of what I may call the accidence of Music, viz. the understanding of keys, intervals, time, notation, &c.-you may give an excellent exercise in parsing a passage of music-you may test the comprehension of the syntax of chords and modulation—and you may even give an exercise in composition. But much remains untried without viva voce examination, and that seems unattainable if the examinations are to be conducted at various points simultaneously. The presence of the same examiners at each place is impossible, and the duty could not be delegated to local instructors without probable inequality, and certain suspicion of unfairness.

In all that relates to examinations for Musical Degrees the Universities would naturally be guided by the distinguished professors who preside over the Faculty of Music, but I am quite sure that the experience of one so intimately acquainted as yourself with Music

in reference to Elementary Education will be most welcome to my colleagues on the Delegacy appointed at Oxford.

John Hullah, Esq.

Yours sincerely,

T. D. ACLAND, Jun.

Letter from JOHN HULLAH, Esq.

MY DEAR ACLAND, Betteshanger, July 31, 1857. As those parts of your two letters which deal with general principles seem to concern Music no less than Drawing, I shall venture, before answering the questions respecting examinations which you have addressed particularly to me, to answer those which you have addressed to my colleague in reference to the "standard of general education for the artist," and "the encouragement of Art as one element in the education of the people in general." I will do this as briefly as I can.

1. To the question thus marked, I should reply that we can not with safety "trust exclusively to a high standard of mental cultivation attained through literature and science (alone) as the surest and most healthy mode of promoting the execution and appreciation of good work," and that the experiment of letting Art take care of itself has been tried long enough in this country.

For instance, our cathedrals and other ecclesiastical monuments were in the last century, as they are in this, under the charge of men who were generally supposed to have, and who very often had, a very "high standard of mental cultivation through literature,” if not through science. The condition of those fabrics, up to a recent period, is notorious. The "mental cultivation of their curators did not save many of them from utter neglect or more mischievous restoration and repair. In keeping with the condition of the fabrics was, and in many cases still is, the music heard within them—often worthless in itself, and more often unfit for its purpose, and executed in a manner which would never be tolerated in connection with any secular transaction.

2. I think that Art, being "once distinctly recognized as a subject of examination, should only be allowed to enter as one among many elements of a good general education." It would seem to be without the province of the proposed examinations to deal with "what is called genius in art."

3. The mode of examination in Art should certainly not be con

fined to what candidates "can do;" they should be, not merely allowed, but required "to show what they have learned from books about Art, its principles, and its history." Surely very false estimates of works of art will often, or always, be made by those who have only a superficial acquaintance with the history of art and the biography of artists. Thus many people speak of Haydn as the inventor of certain great principles in modern instrumentation ; because, though they know that he was born twenty-four years before Mozart, they do not know that he survived Mozart eighteen years, and produced some of his most important works after the death of that great genius.

4. It is perhaps not very important "under what head of the examinations" Art is "ranged." Eventually, perhaps, it will have to be "dealt with separately," but for the present I should like to see it "grouped with literature," with which it has a natural, though too often disregarded affinity. With "mathematical or with physical science" the Fine Arts, excepting Architecture, seem to have only that general connexion which all great subjects and means of discipline have with one another. Even that branch of physical science which seems most intimately connected with musicAcoustics—has as yet done next to nothing for the practice, or even for the theory, of music. Perhaps, however, were artists more often well-educated men, or well-educated men more often artists, these and many other seemingly antipathetical subjects might be made to co-operate with advantage.

I proceed now to deal with that one of your two letters which is more especially addressed to me; and of this it will only be necessary for me to notice especially the last paragraph but one.

As you say, much that relates to the science of music may be tested by "questions on paper"-not quite so thoroughly as might appear, but thoroughly enough for our present purposes. A great deal too which would be so tested, with any amount of examining force at hand, would of necessity belong to those parts of the science of music which recommend it most strongly to many as a branch of general education-those parts which, abounding as they do in nice differences, involve much exercise of the memory and the judgment. But exercise of the memory and the judgment, though fortunately incidental to the study of music, is not all that can be got out of it. I venture to think that among those "other grounds" on which, as you have well said, "music must be upheld," its influence on the affections as well as on the intellect-on the heart as well as on the

head-will one day be more fully acknowledged and more confidently put forward by those who care about education, than at present. This species of musical influence (to return to practical matters) can only be brought to bear through studies and exercises of which paper examinations will be no test whatever: for experience proves that the most carefully framed and comprehensive "music paper" may be fairly well "done" by candidates totally devoid of skill in music as an art-who in fact, are not "musicians" at all.

Here you must allow me to put-for the sake of answering it—a question. What is, or what do artists in music mean by, a musician? By a musician should, I think, be understood one who, thoroughly appreciating and understanding musical symbols, can put himself in direct communion with a musical composer without the intermediate agency of performance; who can hear (so to speak) with his eyes; and who, taking up a musical composition, no more requires that it be sung or played to him in order that he may form an estimate, or know the effect of it, than any well-educated man requires that a book written in a language he understands should be read aloud to him, before he can take in the meaning of the author.

Now, more or less of this knowledge of the sound of what we see, though not the end of musical study, is the indispensable means to obtain possession of such advantages and delights as music has to afford us; until something of it is attained, the musical student has done nothing; he is as inaccessible as ever to the genial influences of the art; his "science" is external to himself, a possession which he will find it equally difficult and useless to retain his hold of. If this be so, an examination which takes no note of that sympathy of eye and ear which go to make a musician, does not touch music as an art at all. Some test of it is I conceive indispensable to the reality of a musical examination. I do not see the smallest difficulty in applying this test.

Let the (duplicate) examination papers be sent, as heretofore, to each centre of examination, and answered under the same surveillance as heretofore.

But to this I would add a vivâ voce examination, on a method * which should be suggested at head-quarters, but which should be carried out in each district by one or two of the most eminent professors within reach-probably the organist or precentor of the nearest cathedral or collegiate chapel, at any rate some person of acknowledged talent and character. The inconvenience of having from

*The plan is explained below, p. 63.