It seems strange that in music women have shown so little creative power. They have proved first-class executants, but as composers they have not attempted any great flights. With a few exceptions their productions have been confined to the lighter kinds of music, to songs and the simpler class of pianoforte works. They have rarely attempted orchestral pieces or the more elaborate forms of vocal composition. Symphonies, oratorios, operas, or even cantatas have very seldom issued from the pen of a woman. It is not, however, impossible that creative capacity may have existed in many women without finding direct expression or acknowledgment. Mendelssohn narrates how he was summoned to play before the Queen, who wished that he should accompany her in one of his compositions. He asked Her Majesty to select her favourite song, and when the Queen had chosen what she called quite the best, Mendelssohn was obliged to confess that the song was his sister’s work, not his own. The elder Mendelssohn would probably have seen more impropriety in his daughter’s name appearing in print than in his son taking credit for what he had not composed. Just as Caroline Herschell’s large share in her brother’s astronomic labours and Fanny Mendelssohn’s authorship were not acknowledged, so is it impossible to say that musical genius may not have been the heritage of some among the women of famous composers’ families. But women have always delighted in playing and singing, even in those early periods of our history when music in this country was chiefly a thing of ear and memory, there being hardly any musical literature and very few professional instructors. In the middle ages, throughout the Renaissance period, and down to the last century, music was part of polite education for both sexes. At the present day a gentleman may go comfortably through life with no more, if as much, knowledge of music as a Board School child, and not be accused of lack of breeding. For a woman in the middle and upper ranks, music has remained an essential feature of education. Indeed, it has been made far too much of, and many years are often wasted in attaining a very moderate degree of executive skill, with little pleasure or profit, by those who have not sufficient natural ability to make prolonged study useful.