"Such are the results obtained by Professor Cheve from a mass of men taken at hazard and against their will. The experiment to-day has had eleven months of duration, seventeen or eighteen lessons being given every month. The pupils have never studied at all between the lessons, and those who remain at the present time have lost many lessons from punishments, illness, leave of absence, etc. "As to the method pursued by M. Cheve, it is as follows: In theory he demonstrates _de facto_ the inequality of major and minor seconds, and from this he deduces the theory of the gamut. Here he follows in the footsteps of his master, Galin. The theory of time he takes from the same source. In practice, he employs the Arabic figures for the musical notes, as proposed by J. J. Rousseau and modified by Galin, using a series of exercises created by Madame Cheve. To these exercises especially does M. Cheve owe his ability to make his pupils masters of intonation in an incredibly short time. He teaches time by itself, using a language of durations invented by the father of Madame Cheve, M. Aime Paris, and tables of exercises in time made by Madame Cheve. Transposition is also taught separately, and never does M. Cheve require his pupils to execute two things simultaneously until they understand perfectly how to do them separately. "In this way M. Cheve leads his pupils through every step of the theory of music until they are able to read _in the ordinary notation_ every kind of music, and to execute during any piece all the possible changes of mode or key." The report--which is duly signed by the officers having charge of the gymnasium--ends with the expression of their "profound conviction that the method of teaching music employed by Professor Cheve is faultless, if it may be judged by its practical results." There is a very common impression, in this country at least, that the best new method of writing music has been tried and abandoned, weighed in the balance and found wanting. This is far from the fact. It is doubtful if there is one person in a hundred in this country who ever heard even the name of Galin or Cheve. Some twenty years ago there was a little interest excited in a new method of musical notation. A class was formed in Lowell, Massachusetts, and a "singing-book" was used there with the notes written with numerals on the staff instead of the usual characters. But it could not have been the Cheve method that the Lowell professor used, for he employed no new system of teaching time--a prime characteristic of that method.