The establishment of National Opera in England, putting artistic considerations aside, presents the following material and commercial advantages, viz., provision of permanent employment for artisans, mechanics, workmen and manual labourers; an impulse to various special industries, some developed, some improved, others created; an honourable occupation to hundreds kept out, so far, from an exclusive and over-crowded profession, and a provision for old age. In other words, the solution of the operatic problem in England might prove a step towards the solution of a part of the social problem. That my scheme for the establishment of an English National Opera House is perfect, I do not claim for a moment. That my plans might be qualified as visionary and my hope of seeing a national art called to life through the means I advocate considered an idle dream is not unlikely. But my conviction in the matter is sincere, and I can meet the sceptics with the words of the old heraldic motto which apologises for the fiction of a fabulous origin of a princely house: _etiamsi fabula, nobilis est_. OPERA FOR THE PEOPLE Opera for the People _The ceremony of opening a new organ, the gift of Mrs Galloway, was performed by Mr W. Johnson Galloway, M.P., in the City Road Mission Hall, Manchester, on Friday evening, September 6, in the presence of a crowded gathering. A Recital was given by Mr David Clegg._ _Mr Galloway, M.P., who took the chair, in opening the proceedings, said_:--On an occasion such as this, it will not, I am sure, be deemed superfluous if I take a brief bird's-eye view of the history of music, and in a--comparatively speaking--few sentences trace its progress towards the position it now holds among the arts of modern life. Music, in one form at least, has been with us since the creation of man, for we may reasonably believe that in his most elementary stage, he discovered some vocal phrases which gave him a certain rude pleasure to repeat, or chant, in association with his fellows. Travellers, who have penetrated the confines of remote and savage countries, have told us of the curious chanting of their inhabitants when engaged in what, to them, were their religious and festal celebrations; and as we cannot conceive man in a more primitive condition, we may take it, that in prehistoric times there was a limited melodic form, which afforded that peculiar delight to the savage mind, that the glorious polyphonic combination of to-day, give to the cultured races of Eastern and Western civilisation.