The maltreatment of music is unfortunately a matter of daily experience. With schoolboys and schoolgirls it is the rule rather than the exception. This is not surprising, for many young people are forced to learn against their will; they make no effort to play well, on the contrary, indeed, will often strike wrong notes to annoy or exasperate the teacher. And even if we only consider those who are striving to improve and to please their instructors, we still find that imperfect mechanism and partially developed intelligence prevent them from doing proper justice to the works which they are studying. And when, in addition to the ignorance, indolence, and waywardness of children, we find corresponding defects in the teachers, the schoolroom becomes, for the time, a true chamber of horrors. The science of education is progressing, and happily it is becoming more and more difficult for people to earn a living, or add to their incomes, by professing an art for which they are utterly incompetent. With improved instruction the faults of the young will at any rate diminish; but we must, I suppose, always expect to meet with imperfection. Music in the drawing-room is a subject from which I shrink. In many houses of the wealthy and of the middle classes we find earnest endeavours to cultivate only the best music, and to give to it that time and attention which it so imperatively demands; but we cannot ignore the fact that music often forms part of evening entertainments as an amusement, as a means of passing time or stimulating conversation.