There is no lover of art to whom the name of Vienna has not been a spell of power from his youth upwards. The capital that could attract and retain Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, will, by many, be exalted as the first musical shrine that should be sought by the holiday pilgrim.

But the objects of pilgrimage are different. To some it will be the past–to some the future.

I had long believed that Vienna must be a place with a musical past chiefly; for the musical present, which consists merely in a constant repetition of favourite works by favourite masters, and which does nothing in nurture of fresh creative art, is, after all, only a past prolonged– leading to nothing, and implying as much mechanical tradition as real reverence. The poet has finely said–

The test of art being in a flourishing state, is not appreciation only, it is also production. Compare the average gains of the musician in the present day with what they were in 1772, when Burney visited Vienna!–count the profits now derived from popular sympathy,–and then consider the comparative pittance at that period bestowed on the artist of genius by the princely patronage to which he was obliged to look for his reward.