How many a factory hand or office clerk in the busy towns of Manchester and the North of England may have owed his only knowledge of what was beautiful to the music he had an opportunity of hearing at my father's weekly concerts during the dreary winter months! It is impossible to believe that some element of refinement has not been developed in the large audiences of working men who, standing and packed together in great discomfort as I have often seen them, have yet listened for hours, and evidently with much appreciation, to most intricate and delicate music ; or that the taste thus formed in one direction should not have had its effect in others, and possibly have coloured their whole lives.