The Musical World, which we lately noticed as having passed
into new hands and improved management, begins the year with great spirit, and seemingly under very favourable prospects. The number for this week contains an address to the public, in which the editors promise many judicious reforms. They are to remove the prgAssional air of the magazine, and to render it popular without being superficial ; they are to emancipate it from shop influcnces—a most important point ; they are to take more enlarged and elevated views of the art than their predeces- sors have ever done, to give an ample port ion Of independent criti- cism, and to render their musical intelligence varied and extensive. The number which contains these promises atibrds a pledge for their performance, for it contains much excellent matter. One of the most amusing articles, though not the most musical, is a paper " On being Ileheaded—our late Head." The " late head" was the royal arms ; the reasons for parting with which are thus stated— "We believe that the royal anus, hitherto ;prefixed to this publication, were fairly won and worn by the original publisher, Mr. Alfred Novelle, who wits mustc-pablisher to the present Queen Dowager during the lifetime of the late King, as well, we believe, as to her Royal Highness the Madness of Kent, anal her present Majesty when Princess Victoria, and had probably no difficulty in obtaining permission to =malice the royal patronage of the work in the usual form.. But as the Masica/ Wm id was thus indebted to an advantage entirely peculiar to its original proprietors, an advantage to which we have ourselves HO sort of claim, so we cannot conseieatiously eontinue to emblazon its results on our humble tbrehead. We do not feel at liberty to exhibit a lion and unicorn of another man's catching ; and so we have come to the virtuous determination of' discarding both the animals from our establishment.
" Perhaps some of our readers may deem us too scrupulous in this matter
may think that our right to the crown was quite unexceptionable, and that it was bequeathed to us along with the property to which it has been till now at- tached. We have, however, some pride in our composition ; and as we feel that we really have a good title to a thing or two; (indeed we reckon the &your of the public amongst the number,) we gi4ow proportionately fastidious with regard to what we claim, and are anxious to put forth no pretensions that we cannot thirly arrogate and fully realize. Now we have long had our suspicions about this immediate patronage' of royalty, which we were understood to in- herit from our predecessors. The frontispiece of our Magazine having con- tracted the Inaba of announcing our supposed honour, we did not like to interfere with it at first; but, upon taking a moral review of our character and position— as beseems, at the New Year—we were visited with compunctions 011 this settee : we felt douldfitl whether her 'Majesty really patronized us ; we were not clear about the transference of the patronage to Ric new proprietor; we had horrible suspicions that we were not (=Manly known to the Queen. Whether her Majesty ever read any other production of our pen, we know not ; but we were obliged to feel sceptical of her intimacy with these pages. Under these circum- stances, we thought it proper to urge upon the present proprietor the advisable- ness of resigning a, title which could no lontrer he held effectively; and accord- ingly, that gentleman has resigned it—therein resembling George the Third, who was the first of our Snvereigns that ceased to sign himself • King of France,' which his predecessors, though they had no more lousiness with the title than he, had gone on doing ever since the time of Henry the Fifth. We held a council of war, in fact, or rather a sort of court-martial, in which we had op our Magazine on a charge of holding, its head too high, and getting a character on false pretences ; and finally, we condemned our own bantling to be beheaded."
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