tion through the popularity of the automobile, Denver's builders realized that it was no longer necessary to confine municipal parks to the city limits. So the city reached out and bought two mountains, the farthest being nearly thirty miles from the edge of the town. To reach these mountain parks Denver was compelled to build a mountain highway which ranks as one of the great engineering feats of recent years. This highway ascends from the edge of the plains in a series of loops and twists until it reaches the top of the nearest municipal park, which is known as Lookout Mountain.

Much of the construction of this road was in solid rock. In many places the face of the mountain-side had to be blasted away to make room for the roadbed. Clearly this was a job for Colorado's convict road-builders. A big gang from the penitentiary was set at work drilling and blasting the snake-like trail up the eastern face of the Rockies. During the progress of this work not a man was hurt, and, what is more important, not a man broke his word and tried to escape.

Denver is, we are told, the first city to have a mountain park system, and also the first to make use of convict labor in the construction of a municipal highway. The results are comparable to the best that Switzerland can offer in the matter of mountain roads for purely scenic purposes.

A MÆCENAS OF MUSIC

Music in America has lost one of its finest friends by the death of Edward J. De Coppet. Mr. De Coppet was a banker and stockbroker, and to some persons was known only as the head of the banking firm of De Coppet & Doremus, of New York City. To most who had heard of him at all, however, he was known as the founder and patron of the Flonzaley Quartette, and to these his death at his home, with the strains of his favorite Beethoven Quartette No. 12 only just extinguished, must have seemed a fitting end. To only a few intimate friends is known anything like the full measure of the man's services to music and the arts.

Mr. De Coppet was born in New York City on May 28, 1855, of a Swiss father and an American mother. Like his father, he went into business in Wall Street, founding the firm of De Coppet & Doremus in 1891. He had always loved music, and when fortune came to him he began the definite patronage of the art and of musicians which

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has earned him a just reputation as a Maecenas of music. Many a musician remembers the appreciative audiences at the "musical nights" in the De Coppet home. The one thousandth of these nights was recently celebrated. Two years ago, at a dinner given to Mr. De Coppet at Sherry's, in New York City, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first musicale at the De Coppet home and the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Flonzaley Quartette were celebrated by two hundred lovers of music.

For many years Mr. De Coppet and his family have spent their summers at their villa on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. This villa was named after a little brook, Le Flonzaley, which runs through the place, and the Quartette took the same name. The Quartette was established for his private use to play chamber music for him. Later it began to give public performances, but until it became self-supporting he always made up the difference between its receipts and its expenditures.

Although a very wealthy man in his later years, Mr. De Coppet hated luxury and personal display, and he continued using the street cars long after most of his friends had bought automobiles. In a quiet way he came to the financial assistance of many young musicians and artists, not always getting from them the gratitude that should have been his. This did not deter him from continuing his efforts to aid others, and his amused comments on the ingratitude which he sometimes found were often very whimsical. His generosity did not end with art or artists, however. He was interested in many social reforms, and the list of his donations to charity will never be known, for he loved anonymity.

Typical of his interest in improving everything that he touched was his interest in ethics. An agnostic, he felt that a high ethical standard for human conduct was necessary, and for some time prior to his death he had been in consultation with leading American authorities on this subject in regard to the endowment of researches into pure ethics irrespective of theological dogma.

The most enduring characteristic of the man, and the trait that made him most valuable not only as a patron of the arts but as a citizen, was his never-ceasing demand for quality. His idea in founding the Flonzaley Quartette was to build up a musical organization in which the individual element would

be suppressed, and whose first aim would be the attainment of high merit as an organization. He did not believe that an orchestra should have any soloists, and it may be remembered that, in the first days of the Quartette, Adolfo Betti and Alfred Pochon alternated as first violin. Although he gave often and liberally, he had the strength of mind to refuse aid to things that he believed were not of the highest.

During the last few years every spring the Flonzaley Quartette, now self-supporting, was engaged by Mr. De Coppet to come to his home and go over new music for the oncoming season. Most men who hired a quartette would feel that they were not getting their money's worth unless they were given a pretty definitely fixed quantity of music. But it was characteristic of Mr. De Coppet's preference for quality over quantity that during those spring weeks of music at his home he always insisted that the members of the Quartette should rest when they pleased and play only when they pleased.

The trio de LUTÈCE

Because the community of moderate size cannot afford to pay for orchestral concerts, it must not think that it is deprived of the best in music. There would be no such dearth of concerts in American towns and villages as there is to-day if Americans generally realized the almost endless variety there is in chamber music. There is nothing in the whole literature of music that surpasses that written for three or four stringed instruments, with and without the pianoforte. Indeed, if the best music is that which most successfully endures the searching test of cultivated taste, then the best music in the world is available to those who have access to a competent string quartette. It is perhaps for this reason that chamber music is considered by many necessarily austere. There can be no greater mistake. On the contrary, chamber music has an almost limitless range. No concert, for example, could surpass in charm such a recital as that given on May 12 in New York by the Trio de Lutèce.

The three men who compose this Trio are natives of France, and for a while were residents of Paris. (A photograph of the Trio is reproduced in the picture section this week.)

It is from the French form of the old Roman name of Paris (Lutetia) that they have taken the name of their organization. Mr. George Barrère is well known, not only as a

distinguished flautist, but as the founder of the Barrère Ensemble, a well-known organization of wind instruments. Mr. Carlos Salzedo was for several years solo harpist at the Metropolitan Opera-House, and is a virtuoso of unquestioned eminence. He is also a pianist of rare skill as an accompanist, as he proved at the recital. Mr. Paul Kéfer was for several years the solo 'cellist in the New York Symphony Orchestra. These three men are masters of what is known as "ensemble playing "—an art not understood by every skilled instrumentalist, the art of playing in a group.

Naturally, these artists find most congenial for performance the works of French composers. Their recital of May 12 consisted predominantly of French music. A notable exception was the "Danse Espagnole No. 2," by Enrique Granados, the Spanish composer, recently a visitor to this country, who with his wife was drowned when the Sussex was sunk in the English Channel by a German submarine.

The soloist of the occasion was the American soprano Miss May Peterson, who sang with charm and distinction a group of French songs.

It was a German, the great Brahms, who gave counsel to a young composer that might well be taken as a characterization of French music. Brahms told the young man that he must work over each composition of his, lay it aside, take it up again, and revise it until it was perfect; if God gave him genius to make it beautiful, Brahms said, he should be thankful, but perfect it must be. This is the sound principle on which French composers have done their work, and God has given them, it would seem, genius to make their music beautiful, too. Whether it is Leclaire of the early eighteenth century or Ravel of this year of grace, whether he works in the idiom of Bach, observing the intricate rules of strict counterpoint, or whether he writes with the freedom and the impressionistic temperament of Debussy, the French composer aims at perfection.

And it is with this same French devotion to perfection that the Trio de Lutèce plays. It is hardly necessary to add that the perfection they aim at includes grace, charm, and freedom.

To those who have never heard the combination of harp, 'cello, and flute a recital by the Trio de Lutèce opens a new source of musical pleasure and understanding.

Two musicians, widely separate in almost every respect, but both of them of international fame, have just died. One was an American soprano whose musical career ended many years ago; the other, a comparatively young German composer whose career seemed to be at its zenith.

Clara Louise Kellogg was one of the earliest of that line of American opera singers who have been perhaps the chief source of any musical distinction that America may have. No American composer ranks with the best, or even, it may be said, with the second best of Europe; but no opera singers surpass the group of Americans who have been distinguished on the operatic stage, not only in this country, but in European cities. Clara Louise Kellogg was seventy-three years old when she died on May 13 at her home at New Hartford, Connecticut, where she had lived for twenty-nine years, since her marriage to the operatic manager Carl Strakosch. She was the first to sing the rôle of Marguerite in Gounod's "Faust" in this country, and the rôle of Senta in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." In those days opera was a struggling exotic, and music was regarded without any great seriousness by the great mass of the American people. Her success as a singer was one of the factors, unquestionably, in making Americans think about music as a serious art. She helped to popularize music in this country, and began at the lowest stage-namely, opera.

Max Reger, whose death was announced by the Leipsic "Tageblatt" on May 12, was regarded by many critics as one of the two most accomplished and individual composers of the present day in Germany. Richard Strauss, nearly ten years his elder, has made his greatest reputation by his operatic as well as orchestral works, while Reger's chief distinction has been his orchestral and chamber compositions. While Strauss has inclined toward descriptive music, by which he attempts to depict moods and even objective events in tone, Reger confined himself almost solely to what is known as absolute music. He is generally recognized as the greatest master of counterpoint of latter-day German composers. He was exceedingly fertile in composition. His "opus" numbers run up well over the hundred mark. It is only, however, as it reaches No. 90 that the list of his compositions records an orchestral work. He

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experimented with dissonance, as have other German composers. Much of what he wrote, though technically astonishing, is lacking in that indefinable quality which makes music live. He was only forty-three years of age at the time of his death.

THE ETHICAL CULTURE

MOVEMENT

The Society of Ethical Culture in New York City has been celebrating its fortieth anniversary. It is entitled to self-gratulation in its review of what it has done.

Forty years ago there were no institutional churches. The Society established the first public kindergarten in New York City; many persons were attracted to it, and it led the way to institutional development. It is natural, then, that a chief feature of the celebration last week should have been the exhibit of the work of the Ethical Culture School, not only in the study of ethics throughout the various grades, but also in music, science, art, shop-work, domestic science, manual training, plays, and games. An endowment fund of $170,000, which is expected to be increased to $200,000, was presented to Dr. Felix Adler, founder and head of the Society, to preserve and further the democratic features of the Ethical Culture School, the income of the fund being used to maintain free scholarships. Dr. Adler said in acknowledgment of this gift:

The main characteristic of the Ethical Culture School is that it is democratic. It attempts to combine the English and American ideas of a public school. The English "public school" is for the classes, while the American is chiefly for the masses. The rightly democratic school is one which employs the best methods that are or can be devised for the education of all.

At the same meeting-in the hall of the Society at No. 2 West Sixty-fourth StreetMayor Mitchel also made an address, in which he said that the city at large was indebted to Dr. Adler, not only for "truly creative contributions" in the cause of education, but also for the work which Dr. Adler had accomplished toward the settlement of labor troubles in the city.

It is well to put the cause of education to the fore in speaking of what has been accomplished by the Ethical Culture movement, for we may be too apt to think of its Sunday meetings as so many protests against religion. This is not just. As Dr. Adler says, the name of the Society does not mean that its

members are 66 suppressed atheists or that they are rationalists in the sense that Thomas Paine was a rationalist. They simply disregard the elements of authority and of traditional belief. While the moral insight enshrined in the Bible is, as he adds, an indispensable condition to further insight, they seek that further insight, and it can be obtained only from experience. Thus dogma gives place to ethics.

THE METHODISTS IN

CONFERENCE

At Saratoga Springs, New York, there is in session a great religious assembly. It is the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In attendance are delegates from all over the world. In the streets and in the meetings are to be encountered bishops not only from various parts of the United States but from foreign countries, not a few of them missionary bishops from distant lands, such as China. Among the delegates are the so-called "fraternal delegates" from other denominations. Every country of Europe, we believe, is represented in that General Conference, with the exception of Germany; and Germany is unrepresented solely because of the war. There are something like a thousand delegates altogether.

The largest meetings are held in the great convention hall, which has held many important assemblages. This hall holds some five thousand people. It is crowded in the evenings and well filled on other occasions. The meetings devoted to certain subordinate subjects or under the direction of special committees are held in various churches.

This is not a gathering for mere talk or the mutual consultation and counsel of individuals, or even of churches; it is a legislative gathering with power. The results of these meetings will be seen in action.

Such a body as this, therefore, has a great deal to do. How complex and comprehensive this meeting is may be judged from the fact that the Conference itself publishes a daily newspaper, in which the daily proceedings are recorded.

Though in these proceedings there is much of necessary routine, some of them are of very distinct significance. For example, action will be taken with regard to the missionary work of the Church, which of course is meeting specially difficult problems in these days of almost world-wide war. Another

subject that has come up for consideration and action will be the question of what is known as the Discipline of the Church. That part of the Discipline which is in question has largely to do with amusements.

Another subject that has been under consideration is the liturgy of the Church. Although the Methodist is not generally regarded as a liturgical church in the sense in which the Protestant Episcopal Church is liturgical, it has a liturgy, and a plan for revision has been under consideration, and some revision will undoubtedly be adopted in the direction of simplification.

One of the most largely attended meetings of the Conference was that devoted to the Sunday-schools and to religious education.

Not the least important subject to come under the consideration of the General Conference for definite action was the proposal for union or co-operation between the Northern Methodist Church and the Methodist Church, South, and possibly also the Methodist Protestant body. A plan for such a union between these different branches of Methodism in America has been submitted in a report by a committee and accepted by the Conference with great enthusiasm. This, of course, is but the first step. The union cannot be consummated until the plan is drawn up in detail and adopted by the several church bodies involved.

We shall give some further account of this great Protestant gathering when definite action has been taken on some of these subjects.

UNREST IN CHINA

On May 16 at Tsinan, the capital of the province of Shantung, there occurred a more sinister conflict than had before taken place in the Chinese rebellion, which, beginning in the southern provinces, has now spread far to the north. Among those killed at Tsinan a number of armed Japanese were found. The Chinese Government immediately protested to the Japanese Minister at Peking. against the participation of Japanese in the rebellion. The Minister replied that, while rowdy Japanese might be assisting the rebels, Japan could not control outlaws or prevent their using the former German railway zone.

The Chinese claim that from the former German base at Tsingtao, at the head of Kiaochau Bay, and Tsinan the rebels have captured a number of important towns, operating generally along the German railway. This railway is now controlled by