The sub-title of this fascinating book is "A Fairy Story with Music." But Mr. Austin's production is something much mere than that. The underlying idea is to show that there is music in everything, and that not only the ordinary sounds of every-day life but also the ordinary happenings can be translated into musical phrases such as child may understand. The idea has its pitfalls, of course; we all remember "the vigorous protest of the child when first. brought into contact with the alien element water' in Strauss's Domestic Symphohy, and the general impression that one day in the courts of this dreadful household is docidedly better than a thousand. The obvious weakness of all programme music is that everything depends on the suggestion of the programme and that the sama musical phrases will serve equally well for any one of half-a-dozen ideas all totally different and even self-contradictory if the others be excluded. But this weakness being duly allowed for, which indeed does not appear prominently in Mr. Austin's book, where each suggestion is led up to very skilfully, "The Fairyland of Music" should prove a great attraction and interest to small' students, of the piano and should encourage them in the daily labour of scale and exercise. Many of the musical ideas are prettily imagined and cleverly worked out, for instance "O Sleep is a Net," "The Music
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.