The foregoing specimen is almost a compendium of what children’s songs and the teaching of them should not be. If children are fond of “rich” harmonies, the fact is to be regretted. (I do not believe that the average child is.) The best possible thing for them, in that case, would be to hear no harmonies at all for some time, but to sing entirely unaccompanied (just as you would deprive them of sweetmeats if they had been made ill by them); special attention given to the harmonization of children’s songs is given in an entire misconception of their character and their uses; for the essence of a child’s song lies in its own rhythmic and melodic independence, and if it depends on an accompaniment for its rhythm, it is by just so much a poor song. There is no harm in a simple accompaniment to a folk-song, but in teaching them to children an accompaniment does for them precisely what we want them to do for themselves, namely, reproduce correctly the metre and the rhythm, the pitch and the contour of the melody. Such training as I have advocated, if carried on through early childhood, brings with it a natural desire to continue singing and makes learning to sing from notes much easier than it would otherwise be. The capacity to sing music at sight is a valuable acquisition for children, for it enables them to take part in choral singing and provides them in after years with a delightful means of access to some of the finest music. The advantage to the individual of this acquired technique is that it is of the mind and not of the muscles; it does not desert its possessor as finger technique deserts the player who ceases to practice. To sing part songs with friends, or to be one of a larger number singing a composition by Bach or some other great composer, in which each singer is contributing to reproduce a noble work of art--this, in itself, is a highly desirable experience. But the process of learning to sing at sight has sometimes led far away from true æsthetics and has resulted in a certain debasing of the taste through singing inferior music. Vocal exercises for sight singing are necessary, and we can accept them as such, for they do not evoke the æsthetic sense; but bad songs taught to illustrate some point of technique are unnecessary and inexcusable. V. THE FALLACY OF THE INEVITABLE PIANOFORTE LESSON But the majority of the children who have private instruction in music take lessons in pianoforte-playing. It has become a custom; the pianoforte is an article of domestic furniture (and a very ugly one); pianoforte-playing is a sort of polish to a cursory education. But the reason is chiefly found in the fact that this is the line of least resistance: there are plenty of teachers of pianoforte-playing but few teachers of music, so parents accept that which is available.