That explains as well why parents take young girls to hear an opera, when if the same piece was played without music they would be appalled at the idea.

What Christian is ever shocked by _La Juive_ or Catholic frightened away from _Les Huguenots_?
Because prose is far removed from art, it is unsuited to music, despite the fact that this ill-assorted union is fashionable to-day?
In poetry there has been an effort to make it so artistic that form alone is considered and verse is written which is entirely without sense.

But that is a fad which can't last long.
Sometime ago M.de Mun said: "Not to take sides is what the author is inhibited from doing.

Art, to my way of thinking, is a setting forth of ideas.

If it is not that--if it limits itself solely to considerations of form, to a worship of beauty for its own sake, without regard to the deeds and thoughts it brings to light, then it seems to me no better than the vain effort of an unproductive cleverness." The eminent speaker is absolutely right as far as prose is concerned, but we cannot agree with him if poetry is considered.
Victor Hugo, in his marvellous ode, _La Lyre et La Harpe_ brings Paganism and Christianity face to face.