regulates the health of the whole impalpable body→→→ the first condition of musical being an invisible framework in which the slippery particles of sound are knit together for action-a natural regularity which we can only bear to hear transgressed from the pleasurable suspense in which the mind is kept for its return; for the suspensions in the musical world, unlike those in the moral, have the blessed property of never bringing disappointment in their train. How deep the sense of time implanted in the human breast, when the mere motion of a little bit of stick, and that not governed by any piece of nicely-constructed mechanism, but by the sole will of one capricious dandy, can supply it in ample abundance to an orchestra of five hundred performers! But the true timist is time all over-his outward man is one general conductor-eye, ear, or touch are alike susceptible to the electric fluid of true musical measure-you may communicate it to him by the palms of his hands or the soles of his feet. One can hardly imagine a state of corporeal infirmity or mutilation which could render him insensible to this law. He may be blind or lame, he may be paralysed from head to foot, or may have left half his limbs on the field of battle, it matters not-while he has sufficient body left to house his mind, the sense of time will not desert him.

The readiness with which the memory lends itself to the service of music is another standing phenomenon peculiar to her. By what mysterious paradox does it come to pass that what the mind receives

with the most passivity it is enabled to retain with the most fidelity-laying up the choicest morsels of musical entertainment in its storehouses, to be ready for spontaneous performance without our having so much as the trouble of summoning them? For not even the exertion of our will is required: a thought -ay, less than a thought-the slightest breath of a hint is sufficient to set the exquisitely sensitive strings of musical memory vibrating; and often we know not what manner of an idea it is that has just fluttered across our minds, but for the melody, or fragment of a melody, it has awakened in its passage. By what especial favour is it that the ear is permitted a readier access to the cells of memory, and a steadier lodging when there, than any of the other organs? Pictures, poetry, thoughts, hatreds, loves, promises of course, are all more fleeting than tunes! These we may let lie buried for years-they never moulder in the grave-they come back as fresh as ever, yet showing the depth at which they have lain by the secret associations of joy or sorrow they bring with them. There is no such a pitiless invoker of the ghosts of the past as one bar of a melody that has been connected with them. There is no such a sigh escapes from the heart as that which follows in the train of some musical reminiscence.

With all this array of natural advantages-science to endow her-instinct to regulate-memory to help her-what is it after all that Music can do? Is the result proportionate to her means? Does she enlighten our views, or enlarge our understandings?

Can she make us more intelligent or more prudent, or more practical or more moral? No, but she can make us more romantic; and that is what we want now-a-days more than anything else. She can give us pleasures we cannot account for, and raise feelings we cannot reason upon : she can transport us into a sphere where selfishness and worldliness have no part to play; her whole domain, in short, lies in that much-abused land of romance-the only objection to which in real life is that mankind are too weak and too wicked to be trusted in it. This she offers unreservedly to our range—with her attendant spirits, the feelings and the fancy, in every form of spiritual and earthly emotion, of fair or fantastic vision, stationed at the portals to beckon and welcome us in. But if she cannot captivate us by these means, she tries no other. She appeals neither to our reason, our principles, nor our honour. She can as little point a moral as she can paint a picture. She can neither be witty, satirical, nor personal. There is no Hogarth in music. Punch can give her no place on his staff. She cannot reason, and she cannot preach; but, also, she cannot wound, and she cannot defile. She is the most innocent companion of the Loves and Graces; for real romance is always innocent. Music is not pure to the pure only, she is pure to all. We can only make her a means of harm when we add speech to sound. It is only by a marriage with words that she can become a minister of evil. An instrument which is music, and music alone, enjoys the glorious disability of expressing a single vicious

idea, or of inspiring a single corrupt thought. It is an anomaly in human history how any form of religion can condemn an organ; for it could not say an impious thing if it would. "Every police director, as Hoffmann says in his Phantasie Stücke, "may safely give his testimony to the utter innocuousness of a newly invented musical instrument, in all matters touching religion, the state, and public morals; and every music-master may unhesitatingly pledge his word to the parents of his pupils that his new sonata does not contain one reprehensible idea "unless he have smuggled it into the dedication. Music never makes men think, and that way lies the mischief: she is the purest Sanscrit of the feelings. The very Fall seems to have spared her department. It is as if she had taken possession of the heart before it became desperately wicked, and had ever since kept her portion of it free from the curse, making it her glorious avocation upon earth to teach us nothing but the ever higher and higher enjoyment of an innocent pleasure. No means therefore can be disproportionate to such an end.

How fortunate that an art thus essentially incorrupt should reign over a greater number of hearts than any other! If poetry and painting have their thousands, music has her tens of thousands. Indeed we should hardly deem that man a responsible being whose heart had not some weak point by which the voice of the charmer could enter; for it enters his better part. Not that it is possible to form any theory of the class of minds most susceptible of her

influence-facts stop and contradict us at every step. The question lies too close at the sanctuary of our being not to be overshadowed by its mystery. There are no given signs by which we can predicate that one man has music in his soul, and another has not. Voltaire is commonly stated to have been a hater and despiser of the art of sweet sounds; but there is perhaps as much evidence against the assertion, as for it, in his works. Grétry says of him that he would sit with a discontented face whilst music was going on which, considering what French music was in his time, might argue not a worse ear than his neighbours', but a better. But granting Voltaire had no musical sympathies in him,-and it goes against our consciences to think he had,-his friend and fellow-thinker, Frederick of Prussia, had them in a great degree; and a man as unlike both as this world could offer, the late Dr. Chalmers, had none at all-except, of course, that he liked a Scotch air, as all Scotchmen, by some merciful provision of nature, appear to do. Then it may seem natural to our preconceived ideas that such a mind as Horace Walpole's should have no capacity for musical pleasure; but by what possible analogy was it that Charles Lamb's should have just as little? How came it to pass that Rousseau, the worthless ancestor of all Radicals, was an enthusiastic and profound musician-while Dr. Johnson, the type of old Toryism, did not know one tune from another; or that Luther pronounced music to be one of the best gifts of Heaven, and encouraged the study of it by pre