THE RUINED TEMPLE
SIR,—" The Magic Flute as music is not notably or at all inferior to the religious music of Mozart." Professor Brogan, like a good historian, does not forget music. But most people sensitive to music would have put it rather differently, or the other way round. At any rate, Mozart himself thought so ; for on his death-bed it was not the Requiem that ran in his head but the Magic Flute. Professor Dent showed, thirty years ago, in his great book on Mozart's operas, that the " absurdity " of the plot and the " banality " of the libretto were more apparent than real. The English version sung by the Sadler's Wells company has nothing absurd or banal about it ; and if the "Temple of Nature, Reason and Wisdom," now in ruins on the continent, had done nothing else for humanity, it inspired some of the greatest and most "healing" music
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