The erection of St Martin’s Hall, the scene of his most public labours, was an enterprise entered upon by him with characteristic light-heartedness. ‘To the work carried out in St Martin’s Hall,’ says Mrs Hullah, ‘is undoubtedly traceable the present all but universal study of music by every class in England; but it may certainly be said that for the chief director of that early movement, splendidly as he was supported and encouraged by his immediate friends, the results were ruinous in every way.’ In this costly building he took up his residence, in order to be near the scene of his classes and concerts, and for more than fourteen years he carried on a severe struggle for the cause which lay so near his heart. In 1861, when the Hall was destroyed by fire, and ‘Mr Hullah, now past his prime, stood a ruined man in the midst of a large family,’ a host of influential friends—including Charles Dickens, Henry Chorley, Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, Sir Arthur Helps, and Mr (now Lord) Coleridge—rallied round him, and gave him a new start in life. In 1861, Hullah published his Royal Institution Lectures on _The History of Modern Music_, a work which met with a cordial reception, and has since been translated into Italian by Alberto Visetti. Hullah’s failure in 1865 to gain the appointment of Professor of Music at Edinburgh was apparently as crushing as any misfortune could be to so buoyant a nature. There was scarcely a spot in the world which he would have chosen for his home in preference to Edinburgh. His lectures at the Philosophical Institution and his numerous concerts had made him well known there, and gained him many warm friends, who apparently encouraged him to suppose that his election was certain. There can be no doubt that he would have been a brilliant professor and an honour to the university; for he was a man of wide culture and boundless enthusiasm for his art. That ‘capacity for general appreciation,’ which he pointed to in Mendelssohn, was very properly cited by a friend as the striking feature in Hullah’s own character. Natural scenery, poetry, painting, and especially architecture, all found in him a thoughtful appreciation.