being angular and hard of outer shell, he frequently requites the treatment received with complete and energetic reciprocity.  Is he therefore to be pitied?  Not a bit; for in this position he is performing one of the most significant and useful of his functions, and disclosing one of his most precious virtues.  While musician and public must perforce remain in the positions in which they have been placed with relation to each other it must be apparent at half a glance that it would be the simplest matter in the world for the critic to extricate himself from his predicament.  He would only need to take his cue from the public, measuring his commendation by the intensity of their applause, his dispraise by their signs of displeasure, and all would be well with him.  We all know this to be true, that people like to read that which flatters them by echoing their own thoughts.  The more delightfully it is put by the writer the more the reader is pleased, for has he not had the same idea?  Are they not his?  Is not their appearance in a public print proof of the shrewdness and soundness of his judgment?  Ruskin knows this foible in human nature and condemns it.  You may read in “Sesame and Lilies:” 

“Very ready we are to say of a book, ’How good this is—­that’s exactly what I think!’ But the right feeling is, ’How strange that is!  I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some day.’  But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go at the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.  Judge it afterward if you think yourself qualified to do so, but ascertain it first.”

[Sidenote:  The critic generally outspoken.]

As a rule, however, the critic is not guilty of the wrong of speaking out the thought of others, but publishes what there is of his own mind, and this I laud in him as a virtue, which is praiseworthy in the degree that it springs from loftiness of aim, depth of knowledge, and sincerity and unselfishness of purpose.

[Sidenote:  Musician and Public.]

[Sidenote:  The office of ignorance.]

[Sidenote:  Popularity of Wagner’s music not a sign of intelligent appreciation.]

Let us look a little into the views which our factors do and those which they ought to entertain of each other.  The utterances of musicians have long ago made it plain that as between the critic and the public the greater measure of their respect and deference is given to the public.  The critic is bound to recognize this as entirely natural; his right of protest does not accrue until he can show that the deference is ignoble and injurious to good art.  It is to the public that the musician appeals for the substantial signs of what is called success.  This appeal to the jury instead of the judge is as characteristic of the conscientious composer who is sincerely convinced that he was sent into the world to widen the boundaries