My space is filled, and even a woman’s monologue must conclude some time! But one paragraph more may be taken to put in a plea for space for an Open-air Museum. It need not be a large and exhaustive one, for there is something to be said for not making museums “too bright and good for human nature’s daily food”. There might be objects of museum interest scattered in groups about the green girdle which the young among my readers will, I trust, live to see round all great towns; or an open-air exhibit on a limited subject might be provided, as the late Mr. Burt arranged so charmingly at Swanage; or the Shakespeare Gardens, already started in some of the London County Council parks, might be further developed; or the more ambitious schemes of Stockholm and Copenhagen intimated; but whichever model is adopted the idea of open-air museums (which might be stretched to include bird sanctuaries) is one which should find a place in the gracious environment of our well-ordered towns when they have come under the law and the gospel of the Town-planning Act. HENRIETTA O. BARNETT. THE MISSION OF MUSIC.[1] BY CANON BARNETT. July, 1899. [1] From “International Journal of Ethics”. By permission of the Editor. “We must have something light or comic.” So say those who provide music for the people, and their words represent an opinion which is almost universal with regard to the popular taste. The uneducated, it is thought, must be unable to appreciate that which is refined or to enjoy that which does not make them laugh and be merry. Opinions exist, especially with regard to the tastes and wants of the poor, by the side of facts altogether inconsistent with those opinions. There are facts within the knowledge of some who live in the East End of London which are sufficient, at any rate, to shake this general opinion as to the people’s taste in music. In Whitechapel, where so many philanthropists have tried “to patch with handfuls of coal and rice” the people’s wants, the signs of ignorance are as evident as the signs of poverty. There is an almost complete absence of those influences which are hostile to the ignorance, not, indeed, of the mere elements of knowledge (the Board Schools are now happily everywhere prominent), but to the ignorance of joy, truth, and beauty. Utility and the pressure of work have crowded house upon house; have filled the shops with what is only cheap, driven away the distractions of various manners and various dresses, and made the place weary to the body and depressing to the mind.