Meanwhile the conflicting current of musical materialism is running strong. _The Daily Mail_, always in the van of artistic progress, has espoused the cause of the insurgent Georgians with intrepid zeal. Mr. JULIUS HARRISON is extolled in a leading article for finding a theme for an orchestral work, not in any of the misty or metaphysical abstractions which appealed to the effete Victorian composers, but in plums. And, mind you, not Carlsbad, but honest Worcestershire plums, without any Teutonic taint. Mr. JULIUS HARRISON'S patriotic example is not likely to be lost on his brother composers. Indeed it is asserted on credible authority that Mr. GRANVILLE BANTOCK, who has completely forsworn all Oriental and exotic subjects, is engaged on a gigantic symphony, with choral interludes, entitled "Yorkshire Pudding;" and that Mr. JOSEF HOLBROOKE is collaborating with Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN in a romantic historical opera in fifteen Acts called "From Woad to Broadcloth." * * * * * Mr. BERNARD SHAW, who, it may be necessary to remind youthful readers, was a musical critic on _The Star_ and _The World_ before he achieved fame as a dramatist, has been causing his friends and admirers serious misgivings by his article on Sir EDWARD ELGAR in a new musical journal, _Music and Letters_. Sir EDWARD ELGAR has a great following; he has written oratorios; he is an O.M.; yet Mr. SHAW salutes him as the greatest English composer, the true lineal descendant of BEETHOVEN, one of the Immortals and the only candidate for Westminster Abbey! To find Mr. SHAW taking a majority view is bad enough; it is a case of proving false to the tradition of a lifetime--a moral suicide. But why drag in BEETHOVEN? So left-handed a compliment prompts the suspicion that, after all, what appears to be eulogy is in reality nothing more than an essay in adroitly dissembled obloquy. _Mutatis mutandis_, Mr. SHAW would not thank Sir EDWARD ELGAR for calling him, for example, the Voltaire _de nos jours_. What he does enjoy is the frank disparagement of Mr. WILFRID BLUNT, who describes him in the second volume of _My Diary_, just published, as "an ugly fellow, his face a pasty-white, with a red nose and a rusty red beard, and little slaty-blue eyes." * * * * *