Moreover, Beethoven occupied a different attitude toward the sonata form from that which he held to the symphony. He deviated from the sonata form in every direction, and this not alone in his later works, when we might suppose he had become wearied with the repetition of his ideas in the same order, but in his works of middle life, when as yet he might apparently have gone on writing sonatas indefinitely, so fresh, so novel and so varied were the tone pictures which he gave the world under this name. He seems to have regarded music as an improvisation, not to be held to some one fixed type of expression, but free to go wherever the fancy of the poet took him, to the end that the entire heavens of the tone world might in time be visited. He expects of his readers an element of the devotee. It is not for amateurs that he writes, still less for the votaries of fashionable society, with its emptiness and repeated insincerities. There is a suggestion of entering into the closet, and of shutting the door, as a prerequisite to the full enjoyment of these ineffable pictures and images which come from his revelation. In the present full-grown faith in the doctrine of the capacity of man for a development continually progressive, it would be presumptuous to say that the three composers, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, have reached the limit of art, so far as instrumental music goes. In the nature of the case, there is not, nor can there be an _Ultima Thule_ in art. Whatever the splendor of color, the nobility of conception, or the sincerity and loyalty of purpose, and however resplendent the works created by these exceptional talents, there is reason to hope that better works still may yet be in store. Stronger and yet stronger imaginations, more perfect technique of expression and finer inspiration, may yet be the lot of fortunate individuals of the twentieth century, inheriting the richly diversified musical experiences of the present time. But in one direction there is little doubt that these three great masters _did_ carry the art of instrumental music to a pinnacle beyond which no one as yet has been able to soar. They represent the climax of classical art. In the nature of the case, the term classical itself is subject to an element of uncertainty. According to the philosopher Hegel, the classical is that art in which the _form_ is beautiful and wholly satisfactory in symmetry, while the _content_ exactly matches it in fullness and beauty. Or, in ordinary usage, the classical is the first-class, the superior, the highly finished, the standard. And since music is a matter of sense perception, and the impressions resulting from it are in some degree dependent upon the ability of the hearer to find the principles of unity (in other words, "the sense of it"), every generation extends the list of the classical, and includes much which the preceding one found imperfect and strained. So far as our