But do you not combine the study of musical pieces with the study of exercises, in order that the cultivation of the taste may go hand in hand with mechanical improvement?
MR.BUFFALO.My dear friend, you are too narrow-minded there,--you make a mistake: taste must come of itself, from much playing and with years.
Your Cecilia played the two new waltzes, and the Nocturne of Chopin, and Beethoven's trio very nicely.

But then that was all drilled into her: we could tell that well enough by hearing it,--Stock and I.
DOMINIE.

Did it sound unnatural to you,--mannered?
and did you think it wooden, dry, dull?
MR.BUFFALO.Not exactly that; but the trouble was it sounded _studied_.
The public applauded, it is true; but they don't know any thing.

Stock and I thought-- DOMINIE.

Do you not think that the taste for a beautiful interpretation may be early awakened, without using severity with the pupil?
and that to excite the feeling for music, to a certain degree, even in early years, is in fact essential?
The neglect of this very thing is the reason that we are obliged to listen to so many players, who really have mechanically practised themselves to death, and have reduced musical art to mere machinery,--to an idle trick of the fingers.
MR.BUFFALO.