Abstract
THE story runs that a countryman, visiting London for the first time, and feeling bound to see Westminster Abbey, by a slight mistake overlooked the Royal Fane, and attended service in St. Margaret's Church hard by. He told his friends in the shires on coming home that the ancient edifice was sadly overrated. Exactly a parallel case to this has just occurred to the writer of the present lines. He was informed by an unknown friend that the small collection of unlabelled instruments in the basement of the Albert Hall was unworthy of the occasion ; and he only made out on close inquiry that the person in question was speaking of one out of the two “overflow rooms” in which the superabundant stores of the Loan Collection are housed, and had never seen the Loan Collection itself at all. This was the more remarkable as the said individual carried the proof-sheets of his guide-book to the Inventories which he was in the act of sending to the printers. It is therefore clearly not superfluous to state that this, probably the grandest and most complete illustration of the history, progress, and development of music ever furnished, occupies the whole of the circular gallery whieh forms the top storey of Capt. Fowke's gigantic building, and runs over into two large rooms at a lower level.
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STONE, W. The International Exhibition—Music Loan Collection 1 . Nature 32, 174 (1885). https://doi.org/10.1038/032174a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/032174a0