"Your what, dear child?" murmurs Miss Juliet protectively, looking down into her niece's dark, fathomless eyes.

"Saxon god," says she quite low, for the first time in all her life experiencing a conscious shyness.

"Are you a pagan, Hyacinthe King?" shrieks the elder aunt.

"Tell us all about it, my dear," says Miss Juliet soothingly.

And Hyacinthe tells them her dream and her resolve.

"So much for an honest English gentleman wedding with a—"

"Lovely Greek girl," finishes Miss Juliet quietly, glancing for the first time at her sister. "They say your mother was very beautiful, Hyacinthe."

"Yes the madre is beautiful: she is like the Venus of the Capitol."

Miss King utters a woeful "Ah!" which her sister endeavors to smother in some kind inquiry.

When Hyacinthe has been shown to her room by the sober housemaid, the two old ladies discuss the situation in full, and Miss Juliet's gentleness so far prevails over Miss King's frigid despair as to wring from the latter a tardy promise to let the young niece pursue the frightful tenor of her way, at least for a time.

A week after her arrival in London, the girl, having informed herself with a marvellous quickness of intelligence on various practical points, calmly laid her plans before her aunts, the elder of whom listened in frigid silence, the younger with assurances of assistance and counsel. She then proceeded to put her projects into action with a curious matter-of-factness that, considering the purely ideal nature of her aim, is to be accounted for in no other way than by the recollection of her parentage—the Greek soul and the British brain.

On a Wednesday morning Hyacinthe and Miss Juliet repaired to the studio of a great sculptor: the niece had previously written to him stating her desire, and the aunt, nervous and excited, clung to the girl's firm arm in a kind of terror.

"You wish to know if you have a talent for my art?" he asked kindly, looking into the pallid young face with its earnest uplifted look. "I think that had you the least gift that way, having lived in Rome, you would know it without my assistance. However, here is a bit of clay: we shall soon see. Try what your fingers can make of it—if a cup like this one." He turned off, but watched her, nevertheless, with fixed curiosity as she handled the lump of damp earth.

Hyacinthe could make nothing of it save twist it from one shapeless mass into another.

"I had hoped it would be sculpture," she said a bit regretfully as she left the great man's workroom. "In my dream he was a statue."

On Thursday the two went to the atelier of a renowned painter. He too bent curious interested eyes upon the absorbed and searching face of his strange applicant as he placed pencils, canvas and brushes before her, and directed her to look for a model to the simple vase that stood opposite or to the bust of Clyte that was beside her. But Hyacinthe had no power over these things, and the two turned their faces back toward the small house in Craven street.

On Friday they sought out a celebrated musician, but the long, supple hands—veritable "piano-hands" he noted from the first—availed the girl in no way here. The maestro said she "might spend years in study, but the soul was not attuned to it."

When Saturday came they went to a famous teacher for the voice. But, alas! Hyacinthe, he said frankly, had "no divine possibilities shrined in her mellow tones." Perhaps she was a little, just a little, disheartened on Saturday night. If so, none knew it.

On Sunday the old ladies took her to St. Martin-le-Grand's church, but all she said over the early cold dinner was, "Women cannot preach in the churches. I could not find him there."

And Miss King said grace after that meat in a loud and aggressive voice, but Miss Juliet whispered a soft and sweet "Amen."

"Can you learn to dance, mademoiselle—learn to dance 'superbly'?" repeated the danseur after his applicant. "Well, I should say no, most decidedly—never. You have not a particle of chic, coquetry: you were made for tragedy, mademoiselle, and not for the airy, indefinable graces of my art. You should devote yourself to the drama."

Hyacinthe looked up, and the old Italian repeated his assertion, adding a recommendation to seek an interview with Mr. Arbuthnot, the proprietor and manager of one of the principal theatres. Before Hyacinthe returned to the little domicile in Craven street she had been enrolled as a member of the company of this temple of the dramatic art.

Arbuthnot was speculative, and withal lucky: he had never brought out even a "successful failure," and a something in this odd young woman's beauty, earnestness, frankness, pleased him. He gave her the "balcony scene," of course, to read to him; noted her poses, which were singularly felicitous; knew at once that she was not cast for the lovesick Veronese maiden; was surprised to discover that she was quite willing to follow his advice—to begin in small parts and work her way up if possible. The shrewd London manager foresaw triumphs ahead when the insignificant "Miss H. Leroy" should pass into the actress Hyacinthe King.

"Aunts, I went out by myself," the girl says as she dawdles shyly over her newly-acquired habit of tea-drinking that evening, "because I knew—I fancied—that you, Aunt Juliet, would not care to go with me where I was going."

"Yes, dear," says Miss Juliet, glad to have the curious child of her favorite brother back with her in safety.

"A foolish and an unwarrantable step, Hyacinthe, which I trust—I trust—you will never repeat." Thus Miss King, adding with severity, "May I inquire, Hyacinthe, where you went?"

"To Bozati the ballet-master first."

"To whom?" Miss King draws forth an old-fashioned salts-bottle, and Miss Juliet glances nervously at the tea-tray. "To whom? Can it be possible that my niece, your father's daughter—No, no! my ears deceive me."

"He said I never could learn to be anything more than a coryphée, aunt, and I knew that that would not be accounted an art," she says quite low. "But I then went to Mr. Arbuthnot. You know him, aunt?"

"I have heard of such a person," answers Miss King, peering austerely over her spectacles at Hyacinthe.

"He has engaged me at a salary of two pounds a week, and he says that some day I shall be great." Her eyes dilate and look out afar, through the tiny window-panes, into a limitless and superb future. "I have found my art; and I am so happy!"

Miss Juliet's glance intercepts her sister's speech. There is silence in the quaint, small parlor that night; and for the first time in many a year the memory of her lost lover's first kiss rests softly on Miss King's wan, wrinkled cheek: for the first time in many a year she has remembered the perfection of him and forgotten the perfidy.

That was October.

This is June.

That night the people had crowned her with a wreath of gold laurel-leaves, and she was walking to her dressing-room, when, as she passed the green-room door, a merry laugh made her glance in. There were fifty people there—actors, journalists, swells and hangers-on of the playhouse. A little to the right of the group, and talking and laughing with two or three others, stood a man both young and handsome.

Hyacinthe went toward him, and the people, unused to seeing her there for a long time past, hushed their talk, and one of them marked the newness of the light that shone in her eyes and the happiness that smiled on her lips as she came. He was a poet, and he went home and made verses on her: he had never thought of such a thing before. She raised the wreath of laurel from her brows and lifted it up to the golden head of the man whose laugh she had caught. "My Saxon god!" she murmured, so low that none heard her save him, and then, leaving the crown on his head, she turned and walked away. She went home to the shabby house in Craven street, which was still her home, and before she slept she whispered to Miss Juliet, "I have found him."

In less than twenty-four hours the scene enacted in the green-room of the theatre had been reported everywhere—first in the clubs, then in all the salons—not last in the pretty boudoir of Lady Florence Ffolliott.

Every night thereafter Hyacinthe saw her hero sitting in his stall: he never missed once, but generally came in well on toward the end of the performance. At the close of a fortnight, as she was making her way to her room after the curtain had come down for the last time, she met him face to face: he had planned it so.

"What would you?" she asked in the odd foreign fashion that clung to her still, and showed itself when she was taken unawares.

"They say I need nothing;" and the blue eyes laugh down into hers. "They say I need nothing now that I have been crowned by a King with laurel-leaves." But even as he speaks the smile fades from his lips: he sees no answering flash on hers.

"That is what you said in the Vatican that night," she says. "Is it true?"

He begins to fear that she is losing her mind, but he speaks gently to her: "Have we met before, then?"

Hyacinthe, standing between two dusty flies while the mirth of the farce rings out from the stage, tells her dream, for the third time, to-night to him. "Is it true that you need nothing?" she asks again, raising anxious eyes to his.

For a moment the man wavers. Last night he would have laughed to scorn the idea of his not being ready with a pretty speech for a beautiful actress: just now he is puzzled for a reply, and he knows full well that some strange new jarring hand is sweeping the strings of his life. "It is true," he sighs, remembering a true heart that loves him. "I have wealth, position—these things first, for they breed the rest," he says with a small sneer—"troops of friends and the promised hand of a woman whom I have asked to marry me."

"I am sorry," she says at last with a child's sad, unconscious inflection, "but all the same, I have found you. Cupid said I should."

"Nothing." The word comes coldly forth without a fellow. He knows then that she has only looked at Love, and that the thoughtless harmony of his life is done for him.

"May I see you sometimes?" he cries as she makes a step onward.

"When you will," she replies, going farther along the narrow passage, and then looking back at him clearly. "I have found you: I am very content. And if you thought I loved you—Well, Love, you know, was a blind god, and so must ever be content to look at happiness through another's eyes."

He went away, and he said to himself, "She does not know what love means."

Night after night found him at the theatre, and night after night saw him seek at least a few moments' talk with her; and always he came away thinking her a colder woman than any of the statues she was so fond of speaking about. In her conversation there was no personality; and although her intellect pleased him, the lack of anything else annoyed him in equal proportion. And yet he loved the woman whom he was going to marry. She was a sweet woman—"God never made a sweeter," he told himself a hundred times a day. He had wooed her and won her, and wished to make her his wife.

She was a sweet woman. For weeks now she had heard harsh rumors and evil things of him that made her heart ache, but she had given no sign, nor would she have ever done so had not her friends goaded her to the point. She hears the light footstep coming along the corridor toward her, and she knows that it comes this morning at her especial call. She sees the bonny face and feels the light kiss on her cheek. Heaven forgive her if she inwardly wonder if these lips she loves have last rested on another woman's face!

"Roy," she says, stealing up to him and laying one of her lovely round arms about his neck, "tell me, dear, if you have ceased to love me—if you would rather—rather break our engagement? Because, dear, better a parting now, before it is too late, than a lifelong misery afterward." There are tears in the blue bewitching eyes, and tears in the gentle voice that he is not slow to feel.

"Florence"—the young man catches her in his arms—"who has—What do you mean? I have not ceased to love you." All the fair fascination that has made her so dear to him in the past rushes over him now to her rescue.

"Then, Roy, why, why—Oh, I cannot say it!" Her pretty head, gold like his own, falls on his shoulder.

"Look up, love." He is not a coward, whatever else. "You mean to say, 'Why do I, a man professing to love one woman, constantly seek the society of another?' Do not you?"

She bows her head, her white lids droop. There is a pause so long that the ticking of the little clock on the mantel seems a noise in the stillness. He puts her out of his arms, rises, picks up a newspaper, throws it down, and says, "God help me! I don't know." Then another pause; and now the ticking of the little clock is fairly riotous. "Florence, love," kneeling by her, "bear with me. It's a fascination, an infatuation—an intellectual disloyalty to you, if you will—but it is nothing more, and it must die out soon."

Her ladyship, telegram in hand, has just knocked at Florence Ffolliott's door. Florence is a special favorite with the old lady: she approves thoroughly of her engagement, which was formally announced at Stokeham last year, and of the man of her choice, who at the present moment is lighting a cigar and cogitating in a somewhat ruffled frame of mind over the piece of news he has just been made acquainted with by his hostess.

"Florence, my dear," says her ladyship, "I am the most fortunate woman in the world. I have been longing for a new star in my domestic firmament, and, behold! it dawns. I expected to have her here some time, but not so early as this; and the charming creature sends me a telegram that she arrives by the eleven-o'clock express this morning: I have just sent to the station for her. I met Roy on my way to you, and conveyed the intelligence to him, but of course he only looked immensely bored: these absurd men! they never can take an interest in but one woman at a time." Lady Florence's quick color came naturally enough. "Now, my child, guess the name of the new luminary."

"I'm quite sure I can't," says the girl, her roses paling to their usual pink. "Tell me, dear Lady Dering: suspense is terrible;" and she laughs merrily.

"Hyacinthe King, the great actress, my dear: could anything be more delicious?" Lady Dering has been absent on the Continent during the season, and is utterly ignorant of all the on dits of the day.

"Charming!" murmurs Florence Ffolliott with the interested inflection of thorough good breeding; but her hands, lying clasped together on her lap, clasp each other cruelly.

"Yes," continues her ladyship. "I knew her father in my young days—Ernest King—the Kings of Essex, you know?" Florence nods assent. "He was the handsomest fellow imaginable, married a lovely Greek girl; and here comes his daughter startling the world with her genius twenty odd years after my little flirtation with him. It makes one feel old, child—old. I called on her the last day I was in London, but she was out; so then I wrote and begged her to come to Stokeham when she could. Now I must leave you, dear. What are you reading? Poetry, of course. I never read anything else either when I was your age and was engaged to Sir Harry." The bright, stately lady laughs gayly as she goes, and Florence Ffolliott sits before her fire until luncheon-time, turning over a dozen wild fancies in her brain—fancies that do no honor either to the man she loves or the woman whom she cannot help disliking heartily. But her just, and withal generous, soul dismisses them at last, and she bows her head to the blow and acknowledges it to be what it is—an accident.

That the advent of Hyacinthe King in their midst should have created no sensation among the party assembled at Stokeham would scarcely be a reasonable proposition: it did, and not only the excitement that the coming of a renowned meteor of the theatrical firmament might be expected to occasion in a house full of British subjects, but an undertone of surmise, and some sarcasms, between those—the majority—who were well enough aware of Roy Chandoce's peculiar infatuation for the beautiful young player. The pair were watched keenly, it must be confessed, but with a courtesy and savoir faire that admitted no betrayal of this absolutely human curiosity—by none more keenly and more guardedly than by Lady Florence Ffolliott. Neither she nor they discovered aught in the conduct of either the man or the woman to find fault with or cavil at.

Not one of them all, however, could dispute the perfect quality of her beauty to-night. In a robe of violet satin, with pale jealous topazes shining on her neck and arms and in the sleek braids of her dark hair, Hyacinthe was fit for the regards of emperors had they been there to see. They were not. In the conservatory at Stokeham, where she stood amid the tropical trees and flowers and breathing the warm close scent of rich blossoms foreign to English soil, there was only one man to look at her, and he was no potentate, but a blond young fellow, with blue blood in his veins and a sad riot in his heart.

For the first time since they have been in the house together he has left his betrothed wife's side and sought hers: in the face of this little watching world about him he has, at last, quietly risen from the seat at Florence Ffolliott's side and followed that trail of sheeny satin into the conservatory. "Not one word for me?" he says in a low voice that has in it a sort of desperation.

She turns startled and looks at him: "Who wants me? Who sent you to fetch me?"

"No one 'sent' me," he replies bitterly: "I 'want' you. Hyacinthe! Hyacinthe!" He stretches two arms out toward her, and when he dies Roy Chandoce remembers the look that leaps then into the eyes of this girl.

"Do not touch me!" She shrinks away with the expression of awakened womanhood on her fair face. "If you do, you will make me mad." For he has followed and is close to her.

"No, no, no! Not 'mad'—happy! Ah, Hyacinthe!" His arms are no more outstretched or empty: they enfold all the beauty and all the bliss that now and then give mortality fresh faith in heaven. "Ah, Hyacinthe!" That is all that he says, and she is silent while his kisses fall upon her mouth and cheeks and brow and hands.

And when, ten minutes later, he goes back where he came from, he knows that it is no "intellectual disloyalty" that lured him from his seat: he knows that the poet was right, and Vane and the viscount and Arthur all wrong.

There is to be a meet at Stokeham Park the next morning, and Hyacinthe, for the first time in her life, witnesses the pretty sight. Two or three only of the ladies are going to ride to cover, among them Lady Florence Ffolliott, who looks superbly on her horse and in her habit, and feels superbly too—in a transient physical fashion—as she glances down at Hyacinthe, who in her clinging creamy gown, with a furred cloak thrown about her, stands in the porch to see them off. She knows nothing of horses or riding, and is therefore debarred from the exhilarating pleasure, and has also declined Lady Dering's offer to drive with her to the first cover that is to be drawn. But the pretty and, to her, novel picture of the various vehicles with their freight of merry matrons, girls and children, the scarlet coats of the sportsmen and the servants, the hounds drawn up a good piece off, the four ladies who are going to ride, and stately, cheery Lady Dering exchanging cordial and courteous greetings with her friends and neighbors, while good-hearted Sir Harry gives some last instructions to his whip, is sufficiently charming.

He takes it, drains it to the last drop and hands it back to her. Their eyes meet, and his lips murmur very softly a Saxon's sweetest word of endearment—"My darling!"

"Quarter-past eleven!" calls Sir Harry; and the gay cavalcade moves off, and Hyacinthe, waving adieu to Lady Dering, watches it fade away among the windings of the avenue.

"Mr. Chandoce has a green mount," mutters one of the footmen to another.

"Yes, he have, but he's not a green horseman."

"No," admits the other.

Hyacinthe remembers their talk later in the day—that day that she passes in such a restless wandering from one room to another—from the conservatory to the library, and from music-room to hall. Finally, at four o'clock she has composed herself with a book in the library, and before the fire sits half lost in reading, half in wondering. Without, the early gloom of the short day is gathering, and the bare trees cast murk shadows all across the frostbitten lawns, and late birds twitter their good-night notes, and a few sleepy rooks caw coldly to each other.

She hears none of this, is as self-absorbed a being as ever lived—one whose whole solitude is full to overflowing with the thought of another. But at last there breaks in upon Hyacinthe's still dream a shriek, and then wild tumult, noises and excited speech, and the girl springs to her feet, and in a flash is out in the wide hall in the very midst of it all.

He lies there quite, quite dead. For ever flown the breath that made of this beautiful clay a living man. Lady Florence has him halfway in her arms as she kneels on the floor beside the body of her lover, and between her sobs cries out to them to "Go for the surgeons!" for whom long since Sir Harry sent. Hyacinthe put her hands behind her and leaned heavily against the column that by good chance she found there. When the crowd parted from him a little she leaned over a bit and stared: that was all.

"Do not you touch him!" cried the English maiden, maddened by her grief, as she glanced up at the fair face.

"No, I will not: I do not wish to," returns the other softly, straightening herself; and leaning there in her close gown, she is as tearless as some caryatid.

When the surgeons have come on their useless mission, and gone, when Florence Ffolliott stands weeping and wringing her hands, Hyacinthe ventures over a pace nearer to the two.

"You see, Lady Florence," she says very gently, and with that curious sorrowful look on her face that made it so like to the Ariadne's—"you see, he was not meant for any woman: he was a Saxon god."

A year later Lady Florence Ffolliott's engagement to her cousin, the little lovelorn viscount, was announced.

Sir Henry Leighton told me last week that he had been called in consultation with regard to Hyacinthe King, and that there were not three months of life in her. "She cannot act," said the great medical man: "she plays her parts, it is true, but the power to portray has gone out of her. She is going back to Rome for a while, and, I can assure you, she will never return."

Marguerite F. Aymar.

MUSICAL NOTATION.

Why is it that the knowledge of music is not more common?—that is, why is it that there are so few people in this and every other country who are able to read and write music as they read and write their mother-tongue? Is it that the musical ear is a rare gift? Evidently not, for music is composed of a small number of elements, which are found for the most part in any popular air, and almost every person can sing one or more of these airs correctly. It is not, then, the musical ear nor the sense of time which is wanting. Neither is the cause to be attributed to the fact that few study music; for, although the teaching of music is by no means so general as it should be, still it is taught in our schools, public and private, singing-schools are common even in our small villages, and there is no lack of teachers both of vocal and instrumental music. And yet out of every hundred who take up the study of music, it is safe to say that about ninety abandon it after a short time, discouraged by the almost insurmountable difficulties presented at every turn. Only those succeed who are endowed with rare natural aptitude, an indomitable will, and time—four or five years at least—to devote to an art which is as yet a luxury to the masses of the people.

M. Galin, his pupil M. Chevé and other advocates of reform in musical notation declare that the people are deprived of this grand source of culture because of the blind, inconsistent and wholly unscientific nature of the ordinary musical notation. At first this seems incredible, but one has only to compare this notation with that elaborated by Émile Chevé after Galin's theory to become convinced that the statement is true. People are apt to say, "Why, it cannot be that our system of writing music is so defective: in this age of improvements and scientific precision gross inconsistencies would have been eliminated long ago." And so, indeed, they would have been but for the fact that the very basis of the system is altogether at fault. How are the Chinese, for example, to "improve" their system of writing? It is simply impossible. They have some thousands of abstract characters, hieroglyphs standing for things or thoughts. All these must be swept away, and in their place must come an alphabet where each letter stands for an elementary sound. These elementary sounds are few in number in any language. So of our musical notation. It is doubtful if it can be materially improved; it must be discarded for a system of fewer elements and a more clear and precise combination of them.

No, it is not strange that we have not adopted a better method of musical notation before this. Think how long a struggle it required to abandon the cumbersome Roman notation for the short, clear and precise Arabic—how many centuries of feeble infancy the science of mathematics passed before the invention of logarithms rendered the most tedious calculations rapid and easy. Most people take things as they seem, giving but little thought to their meanings and relations to each other; and so an awkward method may be followed a long time without protest. People are blamed for their devotion to routine, but devotion to routine is perfectly natural. It is mental inertia, and corresponds to that property in physics—the inability of a body of itself to start when at rest, or stop or change its course when in motion. And then the general distrust of new things—"new-fangled notions," as contempt terms them—retards the examination and adoption of improved and labor-saving methods.

In proof of the superiority of that method, an account of M. Chevé's test-experiment at the military gymnasium at Lyons in 1843 will be interesting. The gymnasium was at that time under the direction of two officers of the French army, Captain d'Argy and Lieutenant Grenier. The facts are taken from their official report of the experiment.

By order of Lieutenant-General Lascours the soldiers of the gymnasium were placed at the disposition of M. Chevé, that he might make a trial of his method. General Lascours further ordered that the officers in charge of the gymnasium should be present at every lesson, and report carefully the progress of the pupils and the final results of the course.

The members of the class were taken at large from the twelfth, sixteenth and twenty-ninth regiments of the line, fifty from each. M. Chevé accepted all as they came, and agreed formally to bring eight-tenths of the class of one hundred and fifty in one year to the following results: (1) To understand the theory of music analytically; (2) To sing alone and without any instrument any piece of music within the compass of ordinary voices; (3) To write improvised airs from dictation.

"Candor compels us to admit," says the report, "that nearly all of the soldiers showed the greatest repugnance to attending the course, and did so only because they were ordered to do so. Several months elapsed before this bad spirit could be conquered, and before the majority of them could be brought to practise the vocal exercises. Some even refused to try to sing, on the ground that they were old, that they had no voice, that they could not read, etc."

The first lesson took place October 1, 1842. There were five a week, of an hour and a half each. At the end of the month the professor wished to classify the voices, and required each pupil to sing alone. The experiment was rather discouraging. More than two-thirds were unable to sing the scale: twelve refused to utter a sound, and declared that nothing would induce them to try. These twelve were immediately dismissed. The rest remained, though some confessed that they had not sung a note since the beginning of the course. These, however, now promised to practise all the exercises in future. Under these unfavorable circumstances the professor engaged anew to fulfil his contract, on condition that the pupils would submit to practise the exercises conscientiously and attend regularly. From this time, with the exception of three or four rebellious spirits, none were rejected.

The month of October was not very profitable to the pupils, on account of continual absences necessitated by military reviews. April and May of the following year (1843) also brought many interruptions through the various demands of the service. Sickness, promotions, punishments, mutations, and the disbanding of the class of 1836, which took away several under-officers, gradually reduced the class, so that in July only a little over fifty were left. This falling off greatly troubled Professor Chevé, especially when the army at Lyons went into camp and left him with only twenty-eight pupils. This reduction of the class could not have been foreseen or prevented. M. Chevé could not be held responsible for the fulfilment of his promise, except to eight-tenths of those that remained.

On April 25, 1843, the general returned, accompanied by Madame Lascours and all the officers of his staff. The following was the programme of the occasion: (1) A quartette from Webbe; (2) A Languedoc air in three parts, from Desrues; (3) A trio from the opera of Œdipus in Colonna, by Sacchini; (4) Singing at sight intervals of all kinds, major and minor; (5) Singing at sight in eight different keys; (6) Two rounds in three voices from Siller; (7) A quartette from the Clemenza di Tito of Mozart; (8) A quartette from the Iphigenia of Gluck; (9) A trio from the Corysander, or the Magic Rose of Berton; (10) Exercise upon the tonic in all the keys, major and minor; (11) Exercise in naming notes vocalized; (12) Singing at sight a trio from the Magic Flute of Mozart; (13) Ave Regina, by Choron—three voices; (14) The Gondolier, a round in three parts, by Desrues; (15) A quartette from the Magic Flute; (16) Chorus from the Tancredi of Rossini; (17) The "Prayer" from Joseph, by Méhul.

This is certainly a remarkable programme to be filled by illiterate soldiers with only six months' training. "It would be difficult," says the official report, "to paint the astonishment of the spectators upon this occasion. The confidence and readiness with which these soldier-students of music sang at sight the most difficult intonations, major and minor, the facility with which they read in all the keys, and, finally, the certainty and spontaneity with which they all, without exception, recognized and named various sounds vocalized, showed clearly that they possessed a very superior knowledge of intonation. All the pieces which they sung were rendered with irreproachable correctness, though the professor did not beat the time, except through the first bar to indicate the movement.

"With the consent of General Lascours, all the teachers and professors in the city, including the members of the Royal College, were on one occasion admitted to a private rehearsal of M. Chevé's class. The result was the same—admiration and astonishment. The professor received on all sides well-merited praise for a success gained in so short a time and with such unfavorable conditions.

"These soldiers have at this moment (September 1, 1843) reached a degree of power in intonation and in reading music at sight which is fairly wonderful. They can sing together at sight any new piece in three or four parts, the music being written, after the new method, in figures. If the piece be written in the ordinary musical character, no matter what the key, they can also sing it at sight together after they have together sung each part by itself. All the members of the class understand thoroughly the theory of music, and are able to write from dictation a vocalized air never heard before, no matter what the modulations may be.

"Such are the results obtained by Professor Chevé from a mass of men taken at hazard and against their will. The experiment to-day has had eleven months of duration, seventeen or eighteen lessons being given every month. The pupils have never studied at all between the lessons, and those who remain at the present time have lost many lessons from punishments, illness, leave of absence, etc.

"In this way M. Chevé leads his pupils through every step of the theory of music until they are able to read in the ordinary notation every kind of music, and to execute during any piece all the possible changes of mode or key."

The report—which is duly signed by the officers having charge of the gymnasium—ends with the expression of their "profound conviction that the method of teaching music employed by Professor Chevé is faultless, if it may be judged by its practical results."

There is a very common impression, in this country at least, that the best new method of writing music has been tried and abandoned, weighed in the balance and found wanting. This is far from the fact. It is doubtful if there is one person in a hundred in this country who ever heard even the name of Galin or Chevé. Some twenty years ago there was a little interest excited in a new method of musical notation. A class was formed in Lowell, Massachusetts, and a "singing-book" was used there with the notes written with numerals on the staff instead of the usual characters. But it could not have been the Chevé method that the Lowell professor used, for he employed no new system of teaching time—a prime characteristic of that method.

Those who examine the subject fairly will be compelled to take the position held by Galin, Chevé and their school, that a new method of writing music is imperatively needed, because that now in use lacks the essential elements of a scientific system: it is neither simple, clear nor concise. There are certain elementary principles which must be observed in the exposition of any science, and especially in that of music, which is addressed to all classes of intelligence. Among these principles are the following, as stated by M. Chevé: 1st. Every idea should be presented to the mind by a clear and precise symbol. 2d. The same idea should always be presented by the same sign: the same sign should always represent the same idea. 3d. Elementary textbooks or methods should never present two difficulties to the mind at the same time; and such textbooks or methods should be an assemblage of means adapted to aid ordinary intelligences to gain the object proposed. 4th. The memory should never be drawn upon except where reasoning is impossible.

Let us test the exposition of the ordinary musical notation, and also that of the school of Galin, by these principles and compare the results.

First. Is every idea presented by a clear and precise symbol?

Again: the scales of the keys of G flat and of F sharp are the same—are played on precisely the same keys of the organ or piano—yet they are placed on different lines and spaces of the staff, and the signature of the first is six flats, and of the second six sharps.

Think of the disheartened state of the victim of this notation when he has learned to read comfortably in one key, and then, taking up a piece of music written in another key, finds that he has all the lines and spaces to relearn! The wonder is that he does not lose his wits altogether.

Compare this maze of notes and lines and spaces, for ever changing like a will-o'-the wisp, with the following:

Here everything is as clear as day. Take any note—as 5, for example. This is sol—always sol, and never by any chance anything else. If it has a dot under, it is sol of the octave below the middle; if it has no dot, it belongs to the middle octave; and if it has a dot above, it belongs to the octave above the middle. These three octaves are amply sufficient for all the purposes of vocal music, which alone is considered here. For instrumental music, where many octaves are used, the system is modified without losing its simplicity and conciseness. To represent the flats, Galin crosses the numerals with a line like the grave accent, and marks the sharps by a line like the acute accent.
For example, flats represent do flat, ré flat, mi flat, etc.: sharps represent do sharp, ré sharp, mi sharp, etc.

A score of music in the new style of notation has no signature—that is, no flats or sharps at the beginning. Above the line of numerals is written simply "Key of G," "Key of A flat," etc. The pitch, of course, must be taken from the tuning-fork or a musical instrument, as it is in all cases.

Second. The same idea should always be presented by the same sign: the same sign should always represent the same idea.

It has already been shown how this principle is disregarded; but take, for further illustration, the symbols indicating silence. There are seven different kinds of rests, and there is no need of more than one. These signs are: