=Remuneration.=--It is impossible to give any estimate of the value of either music or painting as a means of livelihood. A music teacher, if well qualified, may earn a fair living; and a teacher of an instrument less commonly learnt than the piano--say the violin--may sometimes earn £150 or £200 a year while quite young. Singers, unless of the first rank, generally find it profitable to combine private teaching with public performances. For a concert engagement a beginner may receive £5 with travelling expenses, rising soon, if successful, to £10 or £20. Great performers are of course at a “monopoly value,” as the economists say, and their annual earnings often run into four figures. As for composing, its pecuniary reward is very uncertain. “It does not pay to write symphonies,” a popular composer naively remarked, and the same thing may be said of most of the higher kinds of composition. Incidental music for stage plays is often well paid, and a popular song may yield a small income in itself. The budding composer, however, like the artist or author, must be content to let his first works be sold for almost nothing for the sake of making a reputation, but this once made he can command his own terms. A deadening effect is exercised on musical art in this country by the mischievous system of royalties. Many singers high in the ranks will not look at a modern song unless they are paid a handsome royalty for singing it, and thus a valuable means of advancing the reputation of a young composer is rendered useless. Painting and sculpture are so purely an affair of the individual that it is more difficult to make general statements with regard to them than with any other artistic profession. Each artist works on his own lines; there is no general or usual rate of remuneration, and no one can predict with any certainty the prospects of the profession even to a painter of talent. Indeed the less the talent, often, the greater the success. All that can be said is that the woman who means to live by her brush or her chisel must be prepared for a hard struggle before she can earn a competence; and very few attain to wealth. The development of illustration in periodicals has however opened a large and fairly-well paid outlet for women’s work, and many a rising painter would be hard put to it but for the aid that comes--only in guineas and half-guineas it may be, but steadily--from black-and-white drawings for the press. Many men, though at present few women, earn a fairly good living entirely by black-and-white work.