expressions of a mind objective and alertly observant. The difference between them is that in the one case this observation takes for object the purely musical world of tones, and in the other nature's world of persons, nations, races, and climates. But whether he is seeking a piquant rhythm or a curious turn of harmony, or sketching his impression of Spain or Egypt, Saint-Saëns is always the onlooker, the man of the world, never the mystic who contemplates in his own heart the forces that underlie the universe. Strong testimony from the man himself to the truth of this view is indirectly afforded by his essay on Liszt, an essay which is furthermore noteworthy as containing in half a dozen sentences the essential truths of that vexed question of programme-music. He is, to begin with, as assertive as we should expect of the necessity, in all music, of absolute beauty. «Is the music itself,» he says, «good or bad? All is there. Whether or no it has a programme, it will not be, for that, better or worse.» Thus far speaks the author of the symphonies, the concertos, and the chamber-works. The composer of the symphonic poems and the geographical pieces continues: «But how much greater is the charm when to the purely musical pleasure is added that of the imagination coursing without hesitation over a determined path.... All the faculties of the soul are put in play at once, and toward the same end. I can see well what art gains from this, I cannot see what it loses.» Here speaks, recognizably enough, the Frenchman. In that phrase about «the imagination coursing without hesitation over a determined path» stands clearly revealed the dramatic point of view characteristic of French art, which is always devoted to the spectacle of life rather than to the elemental passions which underlie it. The satisfactions Saint-Saëns finds in music are those of the formal musical sense and of «the imagination coursing a determined path;» of the emotional satisfaction which music gives so generously he has nothing to say. To take another instance, how admirably logical and how adequate to the composition, which for all its picturesque grace leaves one cold, is the «programme» he appends to the «Rouet d'Omphale.» «The subject of this symphonic poem,» he writes, «is feminine seduction, the triumph of weakness over strength. The spinning-wheel is but a pretext, chosen solely with a view to the rhythm and the general effect of the piece. Those interested in the study of details will see at page 19, Hercules groaning under the bonds he cannot break, and at page 32 Omphale laughing at the vain efforts of the hero.» Both programme and piece are the creations of a keen intelligence which records its observations with accuracy and skill, but makes no personal revelation, cares not to contemplate itself, and is moved by no deep and perhaps vague, but nevertheless creative, emotion.