partial gusto a waltz or a hymn. These are the instruments of the countryside. Or a Flower Show may provide a brass band all the afternoon. And I have endured fiddling. This surely exhausts the list. Until I heard the harp thus, I denied the right of human beings to make music in chalk valleys. Let them keep to those rivers where men in starched collars punt girls under Japanese umbrellas. It does not matter to me that on such waters—more streets than streams—the banjo and the concertina, the mandolin, the cornet thump, wheeze, twang, and blare. I am not there. In this valley, however, I have always resented the intrusions of music—until now.
Whether the harp is really wilder than other instruments I cannot say. That it is this alleged savagery which renders it pleasing to my ear in this place I do not think. It may be so, but I have a suspicion that a 'cello or a flute, or a sackbut for that matter, under the same conditions, would be to me similarly agreeable. For when the harp sounds it sings to me of matters which lie entirely outside the scope of æsthetics. It is a new voice in the valley, and it carries messages to me which the old never reported. Perhaps to the wooing strains of Gounod's Serenade I seek to lure that four-pound trout which persists within the Island glide. Or, again, when I have risen
