And how has the musical tide risen at Oxford since those days! Some of the young men now come up to college as very good performers on the pianoforte and other instruments. I never know how they learn it, considering the superior claims which cricket, football, the river, nay, the classics and mathematics also have on their time at school. There are musical clubs now at Oxford where the very best classical music may be heard performed by undergraduates with the assistance of some professional players from London. All this is due to the influence of Sir F. Ouseley, and still more of Sir John Stainer, both professors of Music at Oxford. They have made music not only respectable, but really admired and loved among the undergraduates. Sir John Stainer has been indefatigable, and the lectures which he gives both on the science and history of music are crowded by young and old. They are real concerts, in which he is able to illustrate all he has to say with the help of a well-trained choir of Oxford amateurs. As to myself, I have long become a mere listener. One learns the lesson, whether one likes it or not, that there is a time for everything. Old fingers grow stiff and will no longer obey, and if one knows how a sonata of Beethoven ought to be played, it is most painful to play it badly. So at last I said: “Farewell!” The sun has set, though the clouds are roseate still with reflected rays. It may be that I have given too much time to music, but what would life have been without it? I do not like to exaggerate, or say anything that is not quite true. Musical ears grow sensitive to anything false, whether sharp or flat. But let us be quite honest, quite plain. Is there not in music, and in music alone of all the arts, something that is not entirely of this earth? Harmony and rhythm may be under settled laws; and in that sense mathematicians may be right when they call mathematics silent music. But whence comes melody? Surely not from what we hear in the street, or in the woods, or on the sea-shore, not from anything that we hear with our outward ears, and are able to imitate, to improve, or to sublimise. Neither history nor evolution will help us to account for Schubert’s “Trockne Blumen.” Here, if anywhere, we see the golden stairs on which angels descend from heaven to earth, and whisper sweet sounds into the ears of those who have ears to hear. Words cannot be so inspired, for words, we know, are of the earth earthy. Melodies, however, are not of this earth, and the greatest of musical poets has truly said:— Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS I