The three trifles are now _distorted_ taste, _no_ feeling, and _no_ ear for tone; and with these are required the necessary audacity, immeasurable vanity, senseless exhibitions of strength, a poor touch upon the piano, and what they call "intellect." The compositions are now embellished with appropriate pictures on the cover, and with attractive title-pages.

In addition, there is much talk about a "higher beauty," "the stand-points which have been already surmounted," "artistic flights," and the "misunderstanding of the inner consciousness," "Genius must be free," &c.
My old conservative friend, you are seen through.

Your influence, and more especially your ideas about singing, belong only to a past age.
They date from the last century.

You will be derided with your Jenny Lind and Henrietta Sontag.

They are lifeless images of singers, to be kept in a glass case.