When the exhibition closed its doors in October, 1857, the orchestra which I had taken so much trouble to form, and which had given such satisfaction, was on the point of being dispersed to the four points of the compass, never to be heard again in Manchester. This was excessively painful to me, and to prevent it I determined to give weekly concerts during the autumn and winter season at my own risk and peril, and to engage the whole band, trusting to the now awakened taste for music for success and perhaps remuneration. The necessary preparations retarded the execution of this project until January 30, 1858, when the first concert took place before a scanty audience. I was not disheartened, for I remembered how the Chamber Music Society had grown from small beginnings, and judged rightly that the crowds who had thronged the exhibition did not specially come for the music, and that concerts offering nothing but music, and at necessarily higher prices of admission, stood upon another footing. << less