Note 115 — MUSICAL OBSERVATIONS.[109]

That this maxim admits, in our unpoetic and superficial age, of a much more extended application than it did in former times, must be with regret acknowledged by every unprejudiced observer of the modern phenomena in the region of art. Twenty or thirty years ago, great musical talent, enjoying the good fortune of being directed by able instruction, might easily have attained the highest degree of cultivation, there being then no reason to fear those seductive and slippery paths of the musical career, whereby distinguished talent is now so often led astray. A period not yet more remote than twenty or thirty years ago, was favourable to the development of faculties like those of the Countess Sidonie of Brunswick, in Pesth, of whom mention has been made in the Second Period. The present age repeats with enthusiasm the name of "Clara Wieck,"{*****} who for versatility of talent will not easily find a rival among her own sex. But talent which is to be judged by the tribunal of public opinion, if it do not render homage to the taste of the age, must at least show deference to it, and thereby lose its genuine artistical purity. This purity of taste is to be looked for only in dilettanti, who always keep in view the ideal beauty of pure unperverted truth of feeling, because their talents are exercised only in a small circle of musical friends of their own choice. Such persons, however, always remain mere dilettanti, as they do not cease to fulfil those duties which their domestic or other social relations demand, and which, by a prudent distribution of time, are easily rendered compatible with study in any situation in life. It is only on these conditions that their efforts in art, when they rise far above the common level, will win the admiration and approval of all truly cultivated artists.

{*****}Now Mad. Schuman.—ED.