With sufficient organization and the co-operation of co-operative units there is no reason why in time they should not be able to undertake any feasible artistic enterprise. The music-lovers in at least six towns in England could to-day with proper co-operation maintain a permanent orchestra and the theatre-goers an intelligent adequate playhouse, and all towns by grouping could do the same--so far as the orchestra is concerned, at least. These things have been tried and failed, I will be told. To this, if it be true, there are only two answers--the world has progressed only by successive trials and failures; if the first failure had effectually damped the ardour of our ancestors we should still be savages--and, if these enterprises fail really from lack of desire for them and not because of indifference, which can in time be removed, the artistic level of the day must be much lower than even a semi-pessimist like the writer dares to imagine. IX We cannot close even a brief essay without some reference to the effect of some other mechanical devices, such as the gramophone, the piano-player, and wireless, and a note on that all important subject, commercial art. The appreciation of no art shows such great possibilities of expansion in the near future as music. During the last few years it has been released from its most irksome bonds and is now just beginning to stretch its limbs. For technique has been the curse of music, and now it is becoming possible to gain enjoyment without exercising one’s executive and interpretive powers. Musicians are of two classes--executive and appreciative--those who perform and those who listen. True enjoyment of music belongs to the latter, just as true enjoyment of books, of pictures, of plays is the reward of the reader and the spectator--not of the writer, the painter, the actor, or the composer. _Their_ joy is of another order--it is the joy of creation. Without the assistance of modern mechanical aids the music-lover had either to listen to the music-making of his friends or of players at a concert, or he had to attempt to interpret for himself. The first was inconvenient and unsatisfactory. The selection of music was not his own but that of others; the time and place were not of his choosing. The alternative was even worse, since his appreciation was limited by his interpretive powers and marred by his deficiencies. The owner of a modern player-piano has the whole world of piano-music and a wealth of arrangements at his command. Even the lover of orchestral, instrumental, or vocal music has access, through the gramophone and the wireless, to a passable substitute for the real thing.