THE cultivation of Music has been carried to such a degree of perfection in this country, it has become so universally necessary among the acquirements of education, it occupies so considerable a portion of the time, thoughts, and engagements of youth, maturity, and age, the English public is indebted to the science for so much of elegant amusement and private life for so much of individual solace and delight, that it is rather matter of wonder we have no periodical work exclusively devoted to the subject, than of apology for the introduction of our present publication. Perhaps it may have appeared on a distant and casual contemplation of the purposes and powers of music, that but a limited foundation and slender materials could be found whereon to build an useful superstructure of such a kind. The principles of the art might be thought to lie within a small compass, and to be illustrated better by musical than by verbal composition. The essays we already possess have added little or nothing to the stock of musical knowledge, if we except a few (and they are a very few) regular treatises on the more abstruse branches. Practical musicians very much disregard such attempts. It should almost seem that the symbols by which we express the objects of our other faculties are considered to be inapplicable to our apprehension of sounds, and that words in their combinations could do nothing, either to improve the practice or to increase the enjoyment of the art. It cannot be that literature and this delightful occupation are seldom united; they are both the consistent and dignified pursuits of leisure, affluence, and elegance of mind. It is not indeed a necessary property of intellect to combine the perfections of the scholar and the musician; but in this our refined age such accomplishment is by no means uncommon, and perhaps it is the attribute of a stern cast of thought, or of a still more stern