Holding this exalted view of music, he believed that its future was immense and that in America its triumphs were to be greater than they had been elsewhere. At a time when musical culture was rare in this country, he looked forward with hope and expectation to the time when America would become a patron of the best music. "When Americans," he said, "shall have learned the supreme value and glory of the orchestra, . . . then I look to see America the home of the orchestra, and to hear everywhere the profound messages of Beethoven and Bach to men." And again: "All the signs of the times seem to point to this country as the scene of the future development of music. . . . It only needs direction, artistic atmosphere, and technique in order to fill the land with such orchestras as the world has never heard. When our so-called conservatories and music schools, instead of straining every nerve to outdo each other in turning out hosts of bad piano-players, shall address themselves earnestly to the education of performers upon all the orchestral instruments; when our people shall have become aware of the height and glory of the orchestra, as the only instrument for the deepest adorations in man; . . . when our young women shall ask themselves for any serious reason why they should all, with one accord, devote themselves to the piano instead of to the flute, the violin, the hautboy, the harp, the viola, the violoncello, the horn instruments which pertain to women fully as much as to men, and some of which actually belong by nature to those supple, tactile, delicate, firm, passionate, and tender fingers with which the woman is endowed; when our young men shall have discovered that the orchestral player can so exercise his office as to make it of far more dignity and worth than any political place in the gift of the people, and that the business of making orchestral music may one day become far higher in nobility than the ignoble sentinelship over one's pocket to which most lawyers are reduced, or the melancholy slaveries of the shop and the counting-room and the like `business' which is now paramount in esteem; when -- I will not say when we have a new music to perform, but when we shall have played Beethoven's symphonies as they should be played, and shall have revealed to us all the might, all the faith, all the religion, the tenderness, the heavenly invitation, the subtle excursions down into the heart of man, the brotherhood, the freedom, the exaltation, the whisperings of sorrow unto sorrow, the messages of God which these immortal and yet unmeasured compositions embody,"* then will America give to music the place it deserves. Music will be one of the redeemers of the people from crass commercialism.

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* An uncollected essay by Lanier, "Mazzini on Music", `The Independent', June 27, 1878.
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While Lanier held before the American people the vision of what they might accomplish in music, he held up to musicians the high ideal of what they should be. In the essay just quoted, he indorses the saying of Mazzini's that "musicians may become a priesthood and ministry of moral regeneration. . . . Why rest contented with stringing notes together -- mere trouveres of a day -- when it remains with you to consecrate yourselves, even on earth, to a mission such as in the popular belief only God's angels know?" With his high ideal of what a musician should be, he could not but be disgusted at times with the Bohemianism of the men who played with him, and with the loose moral life of many more eminent musicians. "Ah, these heathenish Germans!" he exclaims, as he sees some of the orchestra at a church service making fun of the communion service: "Double-bass was a big fellow, with a black mustache, to whom life was all a joke, which he expressed by a comical smile, and Viola was a young Hercules, so full of beer that he dreamed himself in heaven, and Oboe was a young sprig, just out from Munich, with a complexion of milk and roses, like a girl's, and miraculously bright spectacles on his pale blue eyes, and there they sat -- Oboe and Viola and Double-bass -- and ogled each other, and raised their brows, and snickered behind the columns, without a suspicion of interest either in the music or the service. Dash these fellows, they are utterly given over to heathenism, prejudice, and beer."*

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* `Letters', p. 88.
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The best expression of his ideal of what a great composer should be, is in a letter written to his wife just after he had read the life of Robert Schumann: --

                                   New York, Sunday, October 18, 1874.

I have been in my room all day; and have just concluded a half-dozen delicious hours, during which I have been devouring, with a hungry ferocity of rapture which I know not how to express, "The Life of Robert Schumann", by his pupil, von Wasielewski. This pupil, I am sure, did not fully comprehend his great master. I think the key to Schumann's whole character, with all its labyrinthine and often disappointing peculiarities, is this: That he had no mode of self-expression, or, I should rather say, of self-expansion, besides the musical mode. This may seem a strange remark to make of him who was the founder and prolific editor of a great musical journal, and who perhaps exceeded any musician of his time in general culture. But I do not mean that he was confined to music for self-expression, though indeed, the sort of critical writing which Schumann did so much of is not at all like poetry in its tranquillizing effects upon the soul of the writer. What I do mean is that his sympathies were not BIG enough, he did not go through the awful struggle of genius, and lash and storm and beat about until his soul was grown large enough to embrace the whole of life and the All of things, that is, large enough to appreciate (if even without understanding) the magnificent designs of God, and tall enough to stand in the trough of the awful cross-waves of circumstance and look over their heights along the whole sea of God's manifold acts, and deep enough to admit the peace that passeth understanding. This is, indeed, the fault of all German culture, and the weakness of all German genius. A great artist should have the sensibility and expressive genius of Schumann, the calm grandeur of Lee, and the human breadth of Shakespeare, all in one.

Now in this particular, of being open, unprejudiced, and unenvious, Schumann soars far above his brother Germans; he valiantly defended our dear Chopin, and other young musicians who were struggling to make head against the abominable pettiness of German prejudice. But, withal, I cannot find that his life was great, as a whole; I cannot see him caring for his land, for the poor, for religion, for humanity; he was always a restless soul; and the ceaseless wear of incompleteness finally killed, as a maniac, him whom a broader Love might have kept alive as a glorious artist to this day.

The truth is, the world does not require enough at the hands of genius. Under the special plea of greater sensibilities, and of consequent greater temptations, it excuses its gifted ones, and even sometimes makes "a law of their weakness". But this is wrong: the sensibility of genius is just as much greater to high emotions as to low ones; and whilst it subjects to stronger temptations, it at the same time interposes -- if it WILL -- stronger considerations for resistance.

These are scarcely fair things to be saying APROPOS of Robert Schumann; for I do not think he was ever guilty of any excesses of genius -- as they are called: I only mean them to apply to the UNREST of his life.

And yet, for all I have said, how his music does burn in my soul! It stretches me upon the very rack of delight; I know no musician that fills me so full of heavenly anguish, and if I had to give up all the writers of music save one, my one should be Robert Schumann. -- Some of his experiences cover some of my own as aptly as one half of an oyster shell does the other half.*

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* `Letters', p. 103.
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