Directors of museums and galleries may perhaps be shocked at so heretical a question. But if, as so many art-critics have suggested, music is the ideal type of art we may legitimately approach the subject from a musical point of view in preference to a pictorial one. The records of the other arts are solid material facts: temples and cathedrals, statues, panels, canvases. Compared with a symphony that may last an hour in performance, they are almost to be considered indestructible and eternal. If on hearing the symphony we find that it gives us no pleasure, it is soon over, and we need never hear it again. Once the cathedral has been put up, it is more trouble than it is worth to take it away again. A second generation may think it hideous, a third takes no notice of it, a fourth venerates its antiquity, yet another decides to find it beautiful. The statue or the picture meets with a similar fate, but as it is less bulky, it can at least be sold, bought and sold again. It may acquire value as a rarity, for every material work of art is unique, whereas a piece of music can be reproduced as many times and in as many different places as we choose. The owner of a picture by Titian possesses property which is his and his alone. He might say the same of an autograph manuscript by Beethoven; but he cannot possess the symphony itself――that belongs to the world at large. The autograph may fetch a thousand pounds at auction, but it is no more than a piece of dirty paper. You can hear the symphony played for a shilling.