The happy idea of inviting Mr. Landon Ronald to assume the conductorship has been fraught with consequences of the highest importance, and the success of the movement has long been placed beyond the region of doubt. Perhaps the most important engagement, up to the present time, that has accrued to it, is that of the Sunday concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. These concerts have, undoubtedly, been a great success, and have not only been a source of financial gain to the orchestra, but a much-needed attraction to that building, the vast size of which renders it suitable for none other than occasions of special interest. These concerts do not, however, by any means absorb their energies, as the advertising columns of the daily papers shew. Their services are in constant request, and everything tends to their permanency as a living body. As of the preceding ones, it may be said that this band practically consists of solo players of high excellence. Before concluding this chapter it may be desirable to call attention to the many amateur bands that have sprung into existence in recent years, as this is, undoubtedly, a feature of peculiar significance, and one that has had no little influence in spreading a knowledge of orchestral music in circles that would otherwise probably have not been reached. Their principal members are generally veterans who, in early life, gave up much of their spare time in gaining sufficient skill on their respective instruments to become fairly competent performers, and it is to such as these, and their enthusiasm, that the existence of these bodies and the good done by them, is due. It is about forty years since the movement may be said to have begun, when the cult of the orchestra was either non-existent or in the embryo. The requirements for membership were not exacting, it is true, but it must be remembered that the facilities for the acquisition of even these, were far different in those days to the existing ones of to-day. It is easy, then, to imagine the amount of time, money and energy that must have been necessarily devoted to preserve their vitality. This is eminently true of one of the most prominent of them, the Royal Amateur Orchestral Society. But for the exertions of H.R.H. the late Duke of Edinburgh (afterwards Duke of Coburg), the late Mr. Jas. Ramsay Dow, the late Mr. George Mount, Mr. Herbert W. Symes, Mr. Leonard Beddome and others, it is safe to say that the organisation would have collapsed long ago in the early years of its career. Fortunately, however, the skill and determination they brought to bear upon it, not only averted the catastrophe that seemed often impending, but made its continued prosperity little more than a matter of adequate and prescient direction.