Just so it has been, and so it is, with music at the present day.

Music acts upon our senses, and may be made productive of a kind of natural delight, for in the same manner as we receive, through the organ of the eye, a kind of involuntary pleasure, when we look at beautiful arrangements, or combinations, or proportions, in nature, and the pleasure may be said to be natural, so the pleasure is neither less, nor less involuntary, nor less natural, which we receive, through the organ of the ear, from a combination of sounds flowing in musical progression.

The latter pleasure, as it seems natural, so, under certain limitations, it seems innocent.  The first tendency of music, I mean of instrumental, is to calm and tranquillize the passions.  The ideas, which it excites, are of the social, benevolent, and pleasant kind.  It leads occasionally to joy, to grief, to tenderness, to sympathy, but never to malevolence, ingratitude, anger, cruelty, or revenge.  For no combination of musical sounds can be invented, by which the latter passions can be excited in the mind, without the intervention of the human voice.

But notwithstanding that music may be thus made the means both of innocent and pleasurable feeling, yet it has been the misfortune of man, as mother cases, to abuse it, and never probably more than in the present age.  For the use of it, as it is at present taught, is almost inseparable from its abuse.  Music has been so generally cultivated, and to such perfection, that it now ceases to delight the ear, unless it comes from the fingers of the proficient.  But great proficiency cannot be obtained in this science, without great sacrifices of time.  If young females are to be brought up to it, rather as to a profession, than introduced to it as a source of occasional innocent recreation, or if their education is thought most perfect, where their musical attainments are the highest, not only hours, but even years, must be devoted to the pursuit.  Such a devotion to this one object must, it is obvious, leave less time than is proper for others, that are more important.  The knowledge of domestic occupations, and the various sorts of knowledge, that are acquired by reading, must be abridged, in proportion as this science is cultivated to professional precision.  And hence, independently of any arguments, which the Quakers may advance against it, it must be acknowledged by the sober world to be chargeable with a criminal waste of time.  And this waste of time is the more to be deprecated, because it frequently happens, that, when young females marry, music is thrown aside, after all the years that have been spent in its acquisition, as an employment, either then unnecessary, or as an employment, which, amidst the new cares of a family, they have not leisure to follow.