Enough, perhaps, has been said to show that the American colonists were not the musical barbarians they are so frequently and complacently pictured. Of course, European writers visiting the colonies almost invariably took occasion to incorporate in their literary works slighting references to the state of culture in America. The custom still obtains among literary visitors to these shores. Since the time of Columbus, apparently, it has been an unwritten law that European travellers must speak slightingly of American culture, just as American travellers must make uncomplimentary remarks about European hotel accommodations and transportation systems. Such comments are usually the result of a congenital incapacity to see more than one thing at one time. As a rule they are accurate, but they do not mean what they seem to mean. They are sentences detached from their context. A statement that there is no first-class symphony orchestra in New York would have a very different significance from a statement that there is no first-class symphony orchestra in Oskaloosa--though both sound alike to one who knows nothing about either New York or Oskaloosa. Equally ridiculous are the well-meant attempts to demonstrate the growth of our artistic stature by drawing parallels between the musical activity of the colonies and the musical activities of America to-day. In 1750 the population of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and Charleston combined was less than one hundred thousand, and even as late as 1800 it was little over two hundred thousand. If we are to be fair to the American colonists, we must take into consideration the conditions under which they lived, the youth of the country, its comparative isolation from the old-established centres of culture, the many and complex circumstances that operated to retard its æsthetic development. And if we take these things into consideration, we cannot fairly persevere in our supercilious attitude toward the musical life of eighteenth-century America.