For, _de nobis fabula narratur_. Western Europe also knows of a land which was once a leader in musical art, which forewent its trust, which suffered its voice to be silenced, which allowed its musicians to bid for popularity by adopting foreign names and foreign methods, which is now striving, with better opportunities than any Slavonic nation can possess, to recover the old ground, and recall the forgotten message. If we disdain the comparison we may learn humility by reading the estimate in which we have long been held by our neighbours. “English music,” says a recent German historian, “may be said to end with Purcell”; “English art,” say our French critics, “has long degenerated into imitation”; and though our present leaders are nobly refuting the charge, there is still with us too much of that cosmopolitan temper which is among the most insidious of our enemies. No doubt times are improving. In Leeds, in Birmingham, in Bristol, even in London, the Englishman may get a hearing, though unless he write Royalty ballads he will hardly find a publisher. But his audience is not yet attuned into proper sympathy with his work. We still judge too much by reference to alien ideals, we are still too indifferent to our own natural language, and our own natural cast of thought. And, until we shake off this indifference and learn to extend our patriotism to our art, we shall never resume our place as a great musical nation. There is no need that we should offer a less cordial welcome to our foreign visitors, or a less cordial recognition of the immense service that they have done. “Was macht dieser Fremde hier?” is not patriotism, but discourtesy, a mark of the weakness which fears to meet the world frankly upon equal terms. At the same time we have no right either to neglect or to depreciate our own. A great artistic school is not built in a single moment or in a single generation; the work is long, heavy, difficult; it is easily discouraged, it is easily retarded, it needs all the care and diligence that it can command. And there is one way, and one only, in which we can bring it to a successful issue. Let us cut our timber from our own forests, let us quarry our stone from the bed-rock of our own nation, and then let our master-builders deal with the matter as their genius shall determine. A most hopeful sign is the revival of interest in our national melodies. To the artists who have collected them, to the artists who are making them familiar, our cordial gratitude is due. But it is not enough to have them, we must use them; and it is not enough to use them, we must learn how to catch their spirit. Haydn had a far slighter material than ours, yet he could use it to a purpose which will be remembered when all our exotic romances are forgotten. And now that more than one English master is showing us the way, we have no excuse, we have no pretext for withholding our allegiance any longer.