Henry [Watson] had a singularly beautiful tenor voice; and the three sisters, though not, any one of them, of special power, sang their parts with sufficient precision, with intelligent taste, and with the pretty unison of sisterly voices. In this way, from early childhood, I was accustomed to hear a great range of good music completely and rightly rendered, without breakings down, missings out, affectations of manner, or vulgar prominence of execution. Had the quartette sung me English glees, or Scotch ballads, or British salt water ones, or had any one of the girls had gift enough to render higher music with its proper splendour, I might easily have been led to spare some time from my maps and mineralogy for attentive listening. As it was, the scientific German compositions were simply tiresome to me, and the pretty modulations of Italian, which I understood no syllable of, pleasant only as the trills of the blackbirds, who often listened, and expressed their satisfaction by joining in the part-songs through the window that opened to the back garden in the spring evenings. Yet the education of my ear and taste went on without trouble of mine. I do not think I ever heard any masterly professional music, until, as good hap was, I heard the best, only to be heard during a narrow space of those young days. << less