In regard to music, it is probably just as easy to clear England of the charge of ignorance and want of sympathy. But I cannot undertake the task with any skill, for I know little of the musical world, not enough even to distinguish surely in Simonetti, the famous Italian conductor of the Athanasian orchestra (the names are laboriously fictitious), the excellent Simpson of Brixton, S.W. But the evidence (I plead always for a judgment on evidence, not on the hasty impression founded on a prejudice) would seem to show that England at one time was musical enough in a sweet wholesome way, producing a music of the open-air and the green fields. Then there came the great industrial epoch, and the people turned from the fields to the factories, and dug under the soil instead of tilling its surface; and that stream of thrush-melody was choked, and there came nothing notable to take its place, with no prompting to madrigal and pastoral, with not enough of neurasthenia to produce anything notable in the music of morbidity. But the charge against musical England is carried further. Not only does she produce nothing, but she appreciates nothing. Dumb herself, she is resolutely deaf also to the song of others. I find it difficult to believe this in view of the fact that the hall-mark of London is still sought eagerly by the singers of the world, and is regarded as the final stamp of approval. If England were such a barbarian of the musical world as some would have us believe, why this eagerness for an English verdict of approval, an eagerness which is to be met with all over Europe, America, and Australia? To record concrete facts, there is a great deal that is of musical interest to be explored in England. The capital has many excellent concert halls, where all the world's music from the classics to the latest frenzies of neo-Impressionism can be heard. In the provinces, too, there are many fine musical organisations, and when the "Celtic fringe" comes to be encountered, as in Wales, there is a musical fervour to match that of the most ardent of the Latin races. So--even though opera in London is of social rather than of musical importance--the English cannot be condemned at the present day as musically careless and ignorant; and in past times they have produced some worthy music and show signs in the present time of a revival of native music. [Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY FROM THE END OF THE EMBANKMENT]