time, unless the music so played or sung still bears a living message for the performer. Protest might also be registered against the unadulterated rubbish that is put forward as a translation when a song or operatic excerpt of foreign origin is rendered in English. Of grand opera even the _Daily Telegraph_ is moved to say that "the translations are in most cases literary nightmares." Mere baldness might be excused, and even doggerel overlooked, but one has only to turn to almost any of the current standard translations of foreign songs to see that the matter is worse than this. To expect a student to get up and participate in this verbal foolishness and ineptitude, by endeavouring to express as genuine the balderdash that poses as sentiment and sense, is an insult to his or her intelligence. Finally there remains the "graveyard" school of composition. Here we have the author or composer, or both of them, seeing the world much worse than it is, and think that they do Art a service by putting their realistic conceptions on permanent record. We would join issue with all the various methods--song, literature, drama, and painting--of giving the unpleasant a wider and more effective publicity. The suggestive nature of all of these negative things cannot be overlooked, and should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point: "Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept, saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and disagreeable--make the most of them: they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever pointing the vision upward to what we may become, instead of allowing it to grovel around in the very unpleasant circumstances in which some people are liable to find themselves. The outward vision is transient, the inner vision can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe and hang on the outer edge of life,--we who should walk grandly? Is it for man to tremble and quake--man who in his spiritual capacity becomes the interpreter of God's message,--the focus of Divine Light?"[19] [Note 19: Kirkham Davis, "Where dwells the Soul Serene."] CHAPTER IX MUSIC AND EDUCATION "Music is not only a source of noble pleasure--everyone admits that, at any rate in theory--it is a form of intellectual and spiritual training with which we really cannot afford to dispense" _Sir Henry Hadow_