140. I think we have in this conception as perfect an instance as we
require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in
music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician
and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by
the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This
represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks
ago, in contrast with another which I was watching in its reality;
namely, a group of gentle school-girls, leaning over Mr. Charles Halle,
as he was playing a variation on "Home, Sweet Home." They had sustained
with unwonted courage the glance of subdued indignation with which,
having just closed a rippling melody of Sebastian Bach's (much like what
one might fancy the singing of nightingales would be if they fed on honey
instead of flies), he turned to the slight, popular air. But they had
their own associations with it, and besought for, and obtained it, and
pressed close, at first, in vain, to see what no glance could follow, the
traversing of the fingers.
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