Twice a day they are let out to feed, but they may not leave the Institute building. Everything brought in for their use is carefully searched lest outside help should be given, yet every day, from six to eight, they may have visitors and invite their friends to jovial dinners, at which any amount of assistance--verbal or written--might be given. This lasts for twenty-two days, but anyone who has finished sooner is at liberty to go, leaving his manuscript--_signed as before_--with the secretary. Then the grave and reverend signors of the jury assemble, having added to their number two members of any other section of the Institute--either engravers, painters, sculptors or architects--anything, in short, but musicians. You see, they are so thoroughly competent to judge an art of which they know nothing. There they sit and solemnly listen to these scenas boiled down on a piano. How _could_ anyone profess to judge an orchestral work like that? It might do for simple old-fashioned music, but nothing modern--that is, if the composer knows how to marshal the forces at his command--could by any possibility be rendered on the piano. Try the Communion March from Cherubini’s great Mass. What becomes of those long-drawn, mystical wind-notes that fill one’s soul with religious ecstasy; of those exquisitely interwoven flutes and clarinets to which the whole effect is due? They have completely vanished, since the piano can neither hold nor inflate a sound. Does it not follow, then, that the piano, by reducing every tone-character to one dead level, becomes a guillotine whereby the noblest heads are laid low and mediocrity alone survives? Well! After this precious performance the prize is awarded, and you conclude that this is the end of it all? Not a bit! A week later the whole thirty-five Academicians, painters and architects and sculptors and engravers on copper and engravers of medals all turn up to give the final verdict. They do not shut out the six musicians, although they are going to judge music. Again the pianists and the singers go through the compositions, then round goes the fatal urn, in order that the judgment of the previous week may be confirmed, modified, or reversed. Justice compels me to add that the musicians return the compliment by going to judge the other arts, of which they are as blindly ignorant as are their colleagues of music. On the day of the distribution of prizes the chosen cantata is performed by a full orchestra. It seems just a little late; it might have been more serviceable to get the orchestra before judgment--seeing that after this there is no repeal--but the Academy is inquisitive; it really does wish to know something about the work it has crowned. Laudable curiosity! * * * * *