WE have now reached the prosaic period, when England, for 300 years distinguished by its musical skill, sank so far from its old repute as to acquire the name of an unmusical country, a disrepute which it still retains so far that many read with astonishment and even incredulity of its glorious achievements in the past.

What could have been the reason or reasons for so extraordinary a change? The principal reason undoubtedly was and is the centralisation of England in London, which gives no chance to performers or composers elsewhere. London itself has too huge, heterogeneous, and changing a population to be an artistic centre at all commensurable with its importance in the kingdom, while at the same time it prevents any other town from becoming one, as all first-rate talent of every description gravitates there; London musicians themselves have to contend with the very greatest performers of the whole world. No other town in the British Islands offers any career to a musician except as an organist or teacher. We have no small governments or local princes requiring local orchestras, if we except the Viceroy of Ireland; and our cathedrals, which might partially replace this want, are generally in small towns which have been very far outstripped by others, and now have little importance even in their own province. Consequently our best musicians avoid them, and come to London.

This centralising had already begun under James I, when complaints were made that the northern castles were neglected and falling into ruin; it was enormously accelerated by the Civil War, when the castles of the Royalist nobility were all dismantled.