"'You said a few moments ago, _ma très spirituelle dame_, that music is the art of poor classes. There is this much truth in that, that modern music has indeed been almost entirely in the hands of middle-class people. This being so, everything depends on the nature and dispositions of the middle class in a given country. In England, for instance, the middle class is totally different from that of France or that of South Germany, the home of German music. The English middle class is cold, dry, _gaffeur_ to the extreme, afflicted with a veritable rage for outward respectability, unsufferably formalist, and deeply convinced of its social inferiority. In such a class nothing remotely resembling German or French music can ever possibly arise. Such a class furnishes excellent business men, and reliable sergeants to the officers of imperial work. But music can no more grow out of it than can a rose out of a poker. "'This middle class is the result of British Imperialism, and this is how Imperialism has prevented and will, as long as it lasts, always prevent the rise of really fine music in the higher sense of the term. This is also why we Hellenes never achieved greater results in music. Like the English, or the Americans, we never had a real _bourgeoisie_, or the only possible foster-earth of great music. However, _bourgeoisie_ is only a historic phenomenon, one that is destined to disappear, and with it will disappear all music. Mr Richard Strauss is singing its dirge.'" When Alcibiades had finished his entertaining tale of women and music in England, the gods and heroes congratulated him warmly, and Zeus ordered that, under the direction of Mozart, all the nymphs and goddesses of the forests and seas shall sing one of the motets of Bach. This they did, and all Venice was filled with the magic songs, which were as pure as those produced by the nymph Echo in the Baptistry at Pisa. All the palaces and the churches of Venice seemed to listen with melancholy pleasure, and St Mark's hesitated to sound the hour lest the spell should be broken. When the motet was ended, the gods and heroes rose and disappeared in the heavens. THE FIFTH NIGHT CÆSAR ON THE HOUSE OF COMMONS