character touching persons who have no honest standing in art.  They are fawned on, truckled to, cajoled, subjected to the most seductive influences, sometimes bribed with woman’s smiles or manager’s money—­and why?  To win their influence in favor of good art, think you?  No; to feed vanity and greed.  When a critic is found of sufficient self-respect and character to resist all appeals and to be proof against all temptations, who is quicker than the musician to cite against his opinion the applause of the public over whose gullibility and ignorance, perchance, he made merry with the critic while trying to purchase his independence and honor?

[Sidenote:  The public an elemental force.]

[Sidenote:  Critic and public.]

[Sidenote:  Schumann and popular approval.]

It is only when musicians divide the question touching the rights and merits of public and critic that they seem able to put a correct estimate upon the value of popular approval.  At the last the best of them are willing, with Ferdinand Hiller, to look upon the public as an elemental power like the weather, which must be taken as it chances to come.  With modern society resting upon the newspaper they might be willing to view the critic in the same light; but this they will not do so long as they adhere to the notion that criticism belongs of right to the professional musician, and will eventually be handed over to him.  As for the critic, he may recognize the naturalness and reasonableness of a final resort for judgment to the factor for whose sake art is (i.e., the public), but he is not bound to admit its unfailing righteousness.  Upon him, so he be worthy of his office, weighs the duty of first determining whether the appeal is taken from a lofty purpose or a low one, and whether or not the favored tribunal is worthy to try the case.  Those who show a willingness to accept low ideals cannot exact high ones.  The influence of their applause is a thousand-fold more injurious to art than the strictures of the most acrid critic.  A musician of Schumann’s mental and moral stature could recognize this and make it the basis of some of his most forcible aphorisms: 

     “‘It pleased,’ or ‘It did not please,’ say the people; as if
     there were no higher purpose than to please the people.”

     “The most difficult thing in the world to endure is the
     applause of fools!”

[Sidenote:  Depreciation of the critic.]

[Sidenote:  Value of public opinion.]

The belief professed by many musicians—­professed, not really held—­that the public can do no wrong, unquestionably grows out of a depreciation of the critic rather than an appreciation of the critical acumen of the masses.  This depreciation is due more to the concrete work of the critic (which is only too often deserving of condemnation) than to a denial of the good offices of criticism.  This