"'tis beauty all, and grateful song around!" The sternest conductor smiles involuntarily on his platform, and we grin to ourselves at our lonely piano. We should like every great musician to leave to the world his definition of a storm.

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At the same time we own that it is not from any walk of imitative music, however enchanting, that the highest musical pleasure can be derived. It is not in the likeness of anything in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, that the highest musical capacity can be tried. It is not the dipping passage like a crested wave in The floods stood upright as heap," or the wandering of the notes in "All we like sheep have gone astray," in which Handel's intensest musical instinct is displayed; for beautiful as are these passages, and full of imagery to eye and ear, they smack of a certain mechanical contrivance; but it is in the simple soothing power of the first four bars of the first song in the "Messiah" which descend like heavenly dew upon the heart, telling us that those divine words Comfort ye," are at hand. This we feel to be the indefinable province of expression, in which the composer has to draw solely upon his own intense sympathies for the outward likeness of a thing which is felt and judged of only in the innermost depths of every heart.

Not but what much of the truth of dramatic musical expression is copied from the natural declamation of the human voice, and never was true till Glück adopted this as a model. This is why the Italian recitative, derived as it is from a people of so much violent passion, and pathos of articulation, must ever be an uncongenial thing to most ears unlearned in this land of quiet speech. Most English minds dislike violent exclamation; we object to it in our dwellings and in our pulpits; we shrink from it even in the mouths of those foreigners to whom it is native; it stuns our ears and shocks our habits; we disapprove of such an outlay of passion on small occasions; but let us hear it where the subject is commensurate with the vehemence-let us see Rachel in her Corinne or Phædre, and we at once understand the true source of all musical expression. We feel that this is the musica parlante that founded the opera-that every passion in the mouth of the true interpreter has its key and its time-that many of her passages only require a note struck here and there by the orchestra to convert them into recitative. Her" Donne moi ton cœur, barbare," pitched

| at the highest tones of her voice, (in answer to her brother, who urges her not to forget that she is a Roman,) though it rends our hearts, does not take us by surprise, for we know it at once to be the natural music of her feelings. Her "implacable Vénus!" hissed out pianissimo in the lowest alto tones, (in adjuration of the goddess who is persecuting her,) comes home to us so closely in the truth of its expostulating despair, that we forget even the falseness of the power to whom it is addressed. The very name of Venus cannot disturb our sympathy. Intonation like this teaches us to follow the varied passions of such music as the Scena in the Freischutz with greater intelligence of its matchless truth; we feel that the cantabile of all Mozart's opera airs is amenable to this standard, and their immortality of beauty, their hold over our hearts through every various fashion of music, only to be understood by it.

But in all this the art has had a stated object to fulfil, and we have sought for definite causes to account for definite effects. Let us now turn to those pure musical ideas which give no account of their meaning or origin, and need not to do it-to that delicious German Ocean of the symphony and the sonata-to those songs without words which we find in every adagio and andante of Mozart and Beethoven-far more, we must say, than in those dreamy creations, beautiful as they are, expressly composed as such by Mendelssohn. These are the true independent forms of music, which adhere to no given subject, and require us to approach them in no particular frame of feeling, but rather show the essential capacities of the muse by having no object but her, and her alone. We do not want to know what a composer thought of when he conceived a symphony. It pins us down to one train of pleasure-whereas, if he is allowed the free range of our fancy without any preconceived idea which he must satisfy, he gives us a hundred. There is a great pleasure in merely watching Beethoven's art of conversationhow he wanders and strays, Coleridge like, from the path, loses himself apparently in strange subjects and irrelevant ideas, till you wonder how he will ever find his way back to the original argument. There is a peculiar delight in letting the scenery of one of his symphonies merely pass before us, studying the dim Turner-like landscape from which objects and landmarks gradually emerge, feeling a strange modulation passing over the scene like a heavy cloud, the distant sunlight melodies still keeping their places, and showing the

breadth of the ground by the slow pace at which they shift towards us. There is an infinite interest in following the mere wayward mechanism of his ideas-how they dart up a flight of steps, like children on forbidden ground, each time gaining a step higher and each time flung back-how they run the gauntlet of the whole orchestra, chased further and further by each instrument in turn; are jostled, entangled, separated, and dispersed, and at length flung pitilessly beyond the confines of the musical scene. But wait; one soft bassoon link holds the cable, a timid clarionet fastens on, other voices beckon, more hands are held out, and in a moment the whole fleet of melody is brought back in triumph and received with huzzas. It is sufficiently amusing, too, to watch how he treats his instruments, how he at first gives them all fair play, then alternately seizes, torments, and disappoints them, till they wax impatient, and one peeps in here and another tries to get a footing there, and at first they are timid and then bold, and some grow fretful and others coquettish, and at length all deafen you with the clamor of their rival claims. There is varied pleasure in these and many other fantastic ideas which he conjures upbut there is quite as much in sitting a passive recipient and giving yourself no account of your enjoyment at all.

It is very interesting to know that in that magical symphony of C minor, where those three mysterious notes compose the ever-recurring theme, Beethoven was possessed by the idea of "Fate knocking at the door,' but we are not sure that we should wish to have that black figure with its skeleton-hand always filling up the foreground of our thoughts. We never enjoyed that symphony more than once under the impression that it represented a military subject, and those inquiring notes seemed the outposts reconnoitring. The mere leading idea of the composer is often utterly incommensurate with the beauty of the composition. If, like the Frenchman, we ask Beethoven's Sonata in G, "Sonate, que veux-tu ?" it does not satisfy us to hear that it means a quarrel between husband and wife; that the plaintive, coquettish repartee of the passages is all recrimination and retort, and those naïve three notes which end the last bar, the last word! No, pure wordless music has too mysterious and unlimited a range for us to know precisely what it means. The actual idea from which it may have sprung is like the single seed at the root of a luxuriant many-headed flower, curious when found, but worthless. The

ideas of the composer, like himself, often disappoint us. Rameau declared that he could set a Dutch newspaper to music. Haydn cared not how commonplace the idea might be which was given him to compose to. It matters not whether the depths of musical inspiration be stirred by a pebble or a jewel; at most, we can but judge of the gloom or sunshine that is reflected on their surface.

There is that in Beethoven's works which might well give credibility to the report of his being the son of Frederick the Great, and probably led to it. This grand genius and crabbed eccentric man never loved or trusted. He shut himself up with his music to be out of the way of his fellow-creatures. His deafness only gave him the excuse of being more morose. We hear this to a certain degree in his music. His instruments speak, but they do not speak like men. We listen to their discourse with exquisite delight, but not with that high and complete sympathy which Mozart's wordless speech gives. High as he is above us, Mozart is still always what we want and what we expect. There is a sense and method in all he does, a system pursued, a dominion over himself, an adaptation to others, which our minds can comprehend. He is as intensely human in his instrumental as in his vocal music, and therefore always intelligible. Beethoven is perpetually taking us by surprise. We do not know that we have such sympathies till he appeals to them --he creates them first, and then satisfies them. He keeps our fancy in a perpetual flutter of wonder and ecstasy, but he rarely speaks direct to the common humanity between us. More delicious musical odes than his Longing Waltz, Hope Waltz, and Sorrow Waltz there cannot be, but they were so named for him. It may be questioned whether he ever expressly thought of these subjects. We never feel that he inspires the highest idea of all--the idea of religion. His "Mount of Olives" is exquisite; we are grateful for it as it is, but it might have been composed for an emperor's name's-day, only Beethoven would never have done such a civil thing. His grand "Missa Solennis" is the most wonderful moving tableau of musical painting that was ever presented to outward ear and inward eye. Each part is appropriate in expression. The "Kyrie Eleison is a sweet Babel of supplications; the

Gloria in Excelsis Deo" is a rapturous cry; the quartette "Et in terra pax-hominibus bonæ voluntatis" is meant for beings little lower than the angels; the "Credo" is the grand declamatory march of every voice in

unison, tramping in one consent like the simultaneous steps of an approaching army; the "Ante omnia secula" is an awful self-sustainment of the music in regions separated in time and space from all we ever conceived in heaven or earth. Beethoven out-Beethovens himself in a sublimity of imagery no musician ever before attempted; but as to the pure religious feeling, we neither fall on our knees as with Mozart, nor rise on wings as with Handel.

Where will the flight of musical inspiration next soar? It has been cleverly said by Reichardt that Haydn built himself a lovely villa, Mozart erected a stately palace over it, but Beethoven raised a tower on the top of that, and whoever should venture to build higher would break his neck. There is no fear of such temerity at present. Weber, Spohr, and Mendelssohn have each added a porch in their various styles of beauty, but otherwise there are no signs of further structure. The music of the day has a beauty and tenderness of coloring which was never surpassed, but all distinction of form seems crumbling away. It is like fair visions in dreams, or studies of shifting clouds, or one of Tennyson's rhapsodies; the strain delicate, the touches brilliant, but the subject nothing if the finish were taken away. They cannot be stripped to the level of a child's exercise and still show their beauty of form, like a chorus of Handel or an air of Mozart.

It is impossible to say what resources remain still undeveloped in the progress of music. Fresh forms of nationality may arise. The Italians may form a grand instrumental school; the father or grandfather of some sublime English composer may be now fiddling waltzes in one of our ball-rooms; the Greek church in Russia may foster some Palestrina of its own; new instruments may be invented; the possibility of this may be conceived, but the probability not hoped in, for earthly music must share the mortality of all things here, and Mozart's "Requiem" is above fifty years old.

We have not mentioned the modern opera -the subject has been too well treated but the other day in a contemporary journal* for us to venture on the same ground. Nor does it square with our endeavor to prove the exclusive value of music as the only one of the arts exempt from the trail of the serpent. There are few recent operas that do not give

"A Few Words on the Opera," in Frazer's Magazine for October, 1847.

this theory somewhat the lie; not only in the pomp and vanity of their luxurious accessories, but in a suspicious fascination in the music itself, leaving impressions on the mind that we have been rather listening to the Syrens of the "isle perilous" than the Muses of snow-peaked Olympus.

DRUDGERY OF LITERATURE.-We present our readers with a picture, from the pen of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, of the life of a popular author, which is as true as it is graphic, and may serve to show that the wit, and imagination, and liveliness which sparkle upon paper, may after all be draining the lifeblood from a trembling heart and weary brain. It is a sketch of Laman Blanchard. • For the author there is nothing but his pen, till that and life are worn to the stump; and then, with good fortune, perhaps on his death-bed he receives a pension-and equals, it may be, for a few months the income of a retired butler! And so, on the sudden loss of the situation in which he had frittered away his higher and more delicate genius, in all the drudgery that a party exacts from its defender of the press, Laman Blanchard was thrown again upon the world, to shift as he might, and subsist as he could. His practice in periodical writing was now considerable; his versatility was extreme. He was marked by publishers and editors as a useful contributor, and so his livelihood was secure. From a variety of sources thus he contrived, by constant waste of intellect and strength, to eke out his income, and insinuate rather than force his place among his contemporary penmen. And uncomplainingly, and with patient industry, he toiled on, seeming farther and farther off from the happy leisure in which the something to verify promise was to be completed.' No time had he for profound reading, for lengthened works, for the mature development of the conceptions of a charming fancy. He had given hostages to fortune. He had a wife and four children, and no income but that which he made from week to week. The grist must be ground, and the wheel revolve. All the struggles, all the toils, all the weariness of brain, nerve, and head, which a man undergoes in his career, are imperceptible even to his friends— almost to himself; he has no time to be ill, to be fatigued; his spirit has no holiday; it is all school-work. And thus generally, we find in such men that the break-up of the constitution seems sudden and unlooked-for."

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AMONG the new sciences which the progress of human knowledge is calling into existence from time to time, and which find devotees no less earnest and sincere than those who continue to worship at the older shrines, Ethnology, or the Science of Races, is not the least interesting nor the least tically important. It may be difficult to assign the period when the investigations with which the ethnologist is concerned, first began to assume a really scientific form, instead of presenting their results as a mere chaos of disjecta membra-crude materials, waiting the hand of the architect to work them up into an edifice worthy of the object for which they were collected. As yet, we fear, we must satisfy ourselves with the design, rather than boast of its execution; and please ourselves with the anticipation of what is to be accomplished, rather than dwell with complacency on what has been already effected. When we look, indeed, at the amount of toil which ethnological investigations require for the development of even their least extended results, and the small number of laborers who are professedly devoted to their advancement, we might doubt whether Ethnology would emerge in our own time from the lowest

which its votaries must be at present content, and where indeed they may think themselves fortunate that they can secure a place at all.

But we may well take courage, when we reflect not merely upon the industry and enthusiasm of its votaries, but also upon the fact that the number of those who are indirectly contributing to the progress of Ethnology is far greater than that of its professed followers. For whilst the traveller who examines into the physical characters and the mental condition of the new races of men with whom he comes into contact, who studies their vocabulary and inquires into their grammar, who is a spectator of their religious observances, and pries into the dark mysteries of their traditions and superstitions, who watches their habits of life and acquaints himself with their laws and usages,-furnishes the most important quota to the accumulation of materials: scarcely less valuable are the materials collected by him, whose tastes lead him to attend rather to the physiognomy of the country than to that of its human inhabitants, to its climate and its soil, its products and its capabilities, rather than to their faculties and actions. For in the determination of the important problem, how far the characters of particular races are dependent upon those of the countries they inhabit, the latter set of data are as useful as the former; and no satisfac

tory result can ever be anticipated, until both have been ascertained with equal accuracy. So, again, the philologist who is working out, in the solitude of his study, the problems involved in the history and science of language, though he may little think of connecting his conclusions with the affinities of nations, is an invaluable ally. In the same manner anatomists and physiologists, in scrutinizing the varieties which the typical form of humanity undergoes, and contrasting the extremes of configuration, of color, and of constitutional peculiarity, as observable among the inhabitants of distant climes, cannot enlarge the boundaries of their own sciences, without at the same time rendering the most essential assistance to the ethnologist.

In thus drawing within its grasp, and converting to its own purposes, the results supplied by the investigators of various and widely dissimilar branches of science, Ethnology bears a striking analogy to Geology; an analogy of which Dr. Prichard has dexterously availed himself, in vindicating the claim of Ethnology to rank as one of the departments to which the attention of the British Association should be primarily directed. They are both histories of the past, and depend for their successful cultivation on the unconscious co-operation of many minds, often ignorant of each other's labors.

Of all the problems of Ethnological Science, the relation in which the various races of mankind stand to each other and to ourselves, is perhaps the most attractive. The determination of this relation is, in fact, the ultimate aim to which its departments severally converge, however widely they apparently divaricate. The Anatomist examines the configuration of the body, and compares together the peculiarities of various tribes, with the view of determining how far structural differences prevail over resemblances, and of ascertaining whether these differences possess that constant and intransitive character which the naturalist requires as a justificatien of specific distinction. The Physiologist searches into the history of the vital functions in the several types of humanity, and seeks for information with regard to the permanence of anatomical differences, the effect of external agencies in modifying the configuration or constitution of the body, and the tendency to spontaneous variation in the forms presented by individuals, families, or tribes, known to be of the same stock. The Psychologist has a most interesting subject of investigation, in the

study of the psychical constitution of the several races; in the extraction of their respective mental and moral characters from their habits of life, their languages, and their religious observances. It is his business to inquire how far one common psychical nature is to be inferred from such diverse manifestations: that is, how far the differences which he cannot but observe in intellectual capacity, and in moral and even instinctive tendencies, are fixed and permanent, or are liable either to spontaneous variation, or to alteration from the modifying influence of education and other external conditions. The Physical Geographer lends his aid by bringing to bear upon the inquiry his knowledge of the outward circumstances under which these variations in bodily and mental constitution are most constantly found. And it is from the materials which he contributes, that the physiologist and the psychologist have to determine the degree in which these circumstances can be justly considered to be the causes of variation; more especially, whether the coincidences between particular bodily configurations or mental constitutions, and certain combinations of climatic and geological conditions, are the result of induced differences among the human races which are respectively subject to them, or are to be attributed to original dissimilarity of stock.

But in order to carry on these researches, historical information is continually needed, on the actual descent, migrations, conquests, &c., of the nations whose physical and mental characters we are comparing. The question of the fixity of all or any of the characters by which the races of mankind are at present distinguished from each other, requires for its solution a comparison of the present with the past. No valid proof of their permanence can be drawn from the limited experience of a few generations; and no evidence of change can be reasonably looked for, except from the long-continued agency of modifying causes. The required information is sometimes supplied by direct historical testimony; but this is frequently insufficient. And here it is that the comparative study of languages becomes so important to the ethnologist as an auxiliary to history; extending, combining, and confirming the evidence derived from sources which the historian has exhausted.

Independent of the aid which philological research affords to other departments of Ethnology, it directly bears upon the great problem of the unity or identity of mankind. Since it not merely answers a common pur