cept and example, while Calvin and Knox persecuted it as a snare of the Evil One, and conscientiously condemned it to perpetual degradation in their churches? All we can say is, that the majority pay her homage-that it is one of her heavenly attributes to link those natures together whom nothing else can unite. Men of the most opposite characters and lives that history can produce fraternise in music. If Alfred loved her, so did Nero; if Cœur de Lion was a sweet musician, so was Charles IX.; if George III. delighted in all music, especially in that of a sacred character, so did Henry VIII.; if the hero of our own times, the motto of whose life has been duty, is musical both by nature and inheritance, his antagonist Napoleon at least hummed opera tunes. Oliver Cromwell bade a musician ask of him what favour he pleased. John Wesley remonstrated against leaving all the good tunes to the Devil. Every private family could quote some domestic torment and some domestic treasure, alike in nothing else but in the love for music. There is no forming any system of judgment. There is no looking round in a concert-room and saying in one's heart, these people are all of one way of thinking-they are all intelligent, or all humane, or all poetical. There is no broad mark: young and old-high and low-passionate and meek -wise and foolish-babies, idiots, insane peopleall, more or less, like music. At most there are some who are indifferent, or fancy themselves so, as much from want of opportunity as of taste-some who don't care for bad music, and never hear good— if so hard a lot can be imagined—but there is only one class of men who condemn it, and those are fanatics; and there is only one order of beings, according to Luther, who hate it, and those are devils. But, "If Music and sweet Poetry agree, As needs they must, the sister and the brother," it is among the poets that we shall find the most invariable appreciation of the art of numbers. And what a row of undying names rise at the mere suggestion-all bound up with melodious associations, who have done due homage to the power of sound, and been in just return linked for ever with her most exquisite productions—thus sending their immortal ideas in double channels to the heart! Shakspeare, whose world-hackneyed mottos come over our minds with freshened power and truth, as we seek to analyse what he at once defined—nowhere with such instinctive truth as in the words he has put into Caliban's mouth "The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not ;” Milton-music-descended-who, when the chord of sweet sound is struck, dwells upon it with such melting luxuriance of enjoyment, exalts it with such solemn grandeur of feeling, and clothes it with such sounding harmony of verse as makes us feel as if an earlier Handel might have been given to the world, if a previous Milton had not been needful to inspire him;-old Cowley, too, who asks the same question all have asked "Tell me, oh Muse! for thou, or none canst tell The mystic powers that in bless'd numbers dwell". though he goes on, in the fantastic metaphor of the day, to relate how Chaos first "To numbers and fix'd rules was brought Earth made the bass, the treble flame arose ;" and Dryden, who overflows with love for the art, and has left in Alexander's Feast a manual of musical mesmerism never to be surpassed. Who will also not think of Collins-and his death listening to the distant choir of Chichester? Yet from many poets music receives only that conventional homage which one art pays to another. We need hardly recall Pope's poetry—nor Swift'snor Goethe's-to know that she had no zealous worshippers in them--all men of better heads than hearts, who understood the feelings more by a process of anatomy than by sympathy. Others again feel the contingent poetry attending particular music too much to be real enthusiasts for the music itself. Byron loved the music that came to him "o'er the waters." Burns was too much possessed with the 66 tuning of the heart" to have any cold judgment about that of the voice. Scott loved the hum of the bagpipe, and would have liked the beating of the tom-tom had it been Scotch-though the verse of each has been as much a fund of inspiration to the musician as if, like Moore, they themselves could have sung as well as they have written. We should question Mr. Wordsworth's musical sympathiesdirect or indirect. The materials of his poetry are not akin to music. We do not long to set his deep thoughts to melody-they leave nothing unexpressed for the musician to say. No poet who has been so much read has been so little sung. Nor does Music in her turn seem to inspire him with poetry: he tells us, for example, of the Ranz de Vaches "I listen, but no faculty of mine Avails those modulations to detect, Which, heard in foreign lands, the Swiss affect A musician might have said this-a mere musician -but, we confess, we are rather puzzled with it from so true a poet. It is curious to observe in this, as in every other art, how the two extremes combine the greatest number of admirers. Handel and Jullien hold the two ends of the great net which draws all mankind; the one catching the ear with the mere beat of time -the other subduing the heart with the sense of eternity. But it is in the wide territory between them that the surest instincts must be tried. Here, there are amateurs of every shade and grade, some learned in one instrument, others infatuated for one performer-some who listen ignorantly, others intelligently, but both gratefully, to whatever is really music-others again, conspicuous as musical wicked ness in high places, who care for none but their own. Doubtless some acquaintance with the principles of the art, and practical skill of hand, greatly enhance the pleasure of the listener; but still it is a sorrowful fact that the class of individuals who contentedly perform that species of self-serenade which goes by the ominous title of "playing a little” are the last in whom any real love for it is to be found. There is something in the small retailing of the arts, be it music, painting, or poetry, which utterly annihilates all sense of their real beauty. There is a certain pitch of strumming and scraping which must be got over, or they had better never have touched a note. Apparently the highly-gifted and cultivated amateur, on the other hand, is one of the most enviable creatures in the world. Beauty must always dazzle, and wealth buy; but no disparity in the respective powers of attraction ever strikes us as so great as that which exists between the woman who has only to lift her hand, or open her mouth to give pleasure, and her who sits by and can do neither. But we know that superiority of all kinds must have its penalties, and none more keenly felt than in the ranks of private musical excellence; and though the first-rate amateur may command all the higher enjoyments of the art, without those concomitants of labour, anxiety, and risk which devolve on the professed artist-though she may be spared all the hardships and many of the temptations which lie so thick in the path of her professional sisters, yet the |