No doubt it will have to take its chance with those critics who would censure it at the outset for prying too curiously behind the veil. From such antagonists I beg, for two reasons, courteously to differ. In the first place, this is not a question of irrelevant detail, but an inquiry into the methods of a great artist, and into the character of his work. Grant that it deals with a single aspect alone, it does not therefore disregard or undervalue the others. And to suppose that Haydn is depreciated by the acknowledgment of his debt to his age and country is, I think, somewhat to misunderstand the conditions under which all true “creative” art is produced. In the second place, if we accept the historical statement as true, we do something to rescue a musical nation from undeserved neglect. The race which has given to a master not only birth but inspiration may surely claim from us something better than the oblivion into which we have allowed its name to fall. I wish to offer all due acknowledgment to Mr. L. Finkenstein for his translation of Dr. Kuhač’s pamphlet. OXFORD, _October 12, 1897_. A CROATIAN COMPOSER. The study of Human Nature contains few problems more difficult or more important than those which deal with distinctions of national character. In most countries the original race, itself not always pure, has been affected and modified by a hundred causes; by conquest, by immigration, by intermarriage with neighbours, by all the circumstances and conditions of historical development; and the result is commonly a web of many diverse threads; in which we are fortunate if we can explain the prevailing colour and the prevailing pattern. Sometimes, as in our Indian Empire, the threads lie comparatively free, and puzzle us more by their number and variety than by actual closeness of texture. Sometimes, as in the Kingdom of Hungary, the interplay is so thorough and so complex as almost to baffle analysis at the outset. And when to this is added the influence of climate, of government, of religion, of all that is implied in past record and traditional usage, it will be seen that the question of causality is one which may well tax to their utmost limit the skill and patience of the ethnologist.