THE Dramatist has led us to think that "Music hath charms to soothe the
savage breast," but the "Heavenly Maid" is not so "young" as she was
when CONGREVE wrote, and increasing years seem to have changed her mood
and spoiled her temper. What other conclusion can we come to, when we
find in an article on "Music" in one of the newspapers, in some comments
on the performance of a young lady on the piano at a Monday Popular
Concert, the disquieting statement that she "left her mark as usual on
the audience, the music, and the piano"? It is some little relief to
find the writer adding that "this last was more than once punished
severely;" as it is a fair inference to draw, that whatever the
sufferings of the piano may have been, the music, and, which is far more
important, the audience, escaped with only one assault.
The Managers of the Monday Concerts should consider, before it is too
late, whether they are not endangering the well-deserved popularity of
their agreeable entertainments, by allowing performances which would
seem to have rather too striking an effect upon the hearers.
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=Nocens Absolvitur.=
THE _South London News_ makes rather an unkind suggestion. Thieves enter
tradesmen's shops, under pretence of selling something. The _News_
thinks that people who would be exempt from such visits should "keep
watch, and, on opportunity, hand the victims over to the police." This
may be fair in South London, wherever that is, but in Fleet Street we do
not dispense that kind of justice.
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