Contrast the scene here described with the appearance presented on similar occasion by the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket.  There, few are bold enough either to applaud or disapprove.  Many simple, perhaps, but beautiful and refined, characteristics of the composer or performer, may pass unnoticed; but some common-place embellishment, which is considered safe, will command the expression of approbation which the trait of real genius had failed to elicit.  After a few representations, the fear of applauding unwisely is diminished, but still, as was once said of the French under similar circumstances, “they affirm with the lips, but with the eye they interrogate;” and it is not till a sort of prescription has been established in favour of certain airs and passages, that the Englishman banishes doubt and distrust, and claps his hands, and shouts bravo—­accenting the word strongly on the first syllable—­with an air of confidence and decision.  We would, nevertheless, entertain the hope, that our national reserve, or the mauvaise honte, which our countrymen contrive to exhibit on every possible occasion, is one cause of this apparent dulness; at all events, it would seem highly probable that a people among whom music is a necessity, should, in the unbiassed judgment of contemporary nations, be our superiors in the art.

In the north of England, musical taste is much more widely diffused than in the south.  The Committee of the Privy Council on Education, report favourably also of the musical attainments of the people of Norfolk.  Mr Hogarth, in his excellent and able work, observes, that “in the densely peopled manufacturing districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, music is cultivated among the working classes to an extent unparalleled in any other part of the kingdom.  Every town has its choral society, supported by the amateurs of the place and its neighbourhood, where the sacred works of Handel and the more modern masters are performed, with precision and effect, by a vocal and instrumental orchestra, consisting of mechanics and work people; and every village church has its occasional oratorio, where a well-chosen and well-performed selection of sacred music is listened to by a decent and attentive audience, of the same class as the performers, mingled with their employers and their families.  Hence, the practice of this music is an ordinary domestic and social recreation among the working classes of these districts, and its influence is of the most salutary kind.”  We can ourselves bear witness to the truth of many of these remarks.  In some of the more rural portions of the manufacturing districts of Lancashire, we have often listened to the voices of little bands of happy children, who, while returning home after the labours of the day were over, were singing psalms and hymns to tunes learned at the national or Sunday schools.  A highly interesting example of the superior musical capacity of the inhabitants