So, again, with purely literary beauty, beyond the range of purely Greek genius. We are touched by the perfection of literary grace and delicacy and force, simply because this perfection strikes a chord within us, which is attuned to answer to the voice of law and order, as the strings of the Eolian harp quiver in melody beneath the summer breeze. Undoubtedly, in many of these cases the element of human sympathy mingles with the sense of pure beauty, and we may imagine that it is only from love and pity for our fellow-creatures that we find ourselves so moved. There is the beauty of simplicity and unaffectedness, it is true, in such tear-compelling sentences as the story of Joseph making himself known to his brethren, or the Scotch songs "Caller herrin" and "There's nae luck about the house," or the recognition of Harry Bertram by Dominie Sampson in "Guy Mannering." But there are others in which the human sympathy is stirred within us with a special fervour through our perception of the singular artistic sof the writer, and of the wonderful charm of the form of his sentences and the concentrated propriety of every syllable that he utters. Such is the concluding paragraph in Tacitus's Life of Agricola, beginning "Si quis piorum Manibus locus"; such are Cowper's verses on the Loss of the Royal George; and such is Tennyson's "Break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, O sea!" In all these, it is not merely the expression of the intensity of the loss which the heart has sustained which moves us; it is the exquisite finish of the writing, the balance of sentence and phrase, the propriety of every word, the musical flow of sound, felt rather than distinctly heard, the embodiment, that is, of living law and order, which quickens our sensibilities into a more instant response, and makes us doubt whether our enjoyment is more sad or our sorrow more joyful.

And such is the explanation of the effect of that unrivalled among all choral masterpieces which has lately appeared to many persons as a species of revelation of a power in music which they had never before dreamed of. All music is the expression of the beauty of form through the medium of sound. That form varies to a vast extent, just as the written languages of men vary, as the forms of versification vary, as the possible combinations of colour, the linear shapes of the human countenance, the outlines of vases, of dress, of architectural structure and decoration, all vary. But just as in all these there can be no beauty without the proportion of parts, without symmetry, without the sentiment of life united with the conception of over-ruling law and order, it is with musical expression.

Music, again, possesses a power peculiarly its own. It can excite the purely emotional portion of our nature to a degree without parallel in any other art in which a definite human feeling is not presented to us. In its vagueness lies concealed a readiness to adapt itself to the expression of combined thought and feeling with an intensity altogether transcending any other vehicle which our nature possesses. And the secret of this power I take to be this: Every man and woman who

thinks and feels, except in the most common-place and superficial fashion, is conscious, in some degree, of the inexplicable mysteriousness of the life we live and of the universe we live in. It is not a question of this or that theology, or of this or that philosophy, or of this or that mode of living. All of us are conscious of the same desire to escape from the bondage of our personal loneliness and ignorance into some sort of freer atmosphere, in which our faculties may range and expand in a new and more unhampered exercise, and our enjoyment of existence and our perceptions of truths may become more definite and real.

And it is because it puts into a species of articulate voice this undying desire, that music exercises its spell upon those who are sensitive to its charm. As in all other matters, men are variously endowed in this respect, and this endowment does not necessarily accompany any other peculiarity of natural endowment. At the same time, the sensibility to music takes various forms, in exact accordance with the rest of a man's nature. The man of shallow nature likes one kind of music, the man of thought and depth loves another. There is music which touches the weak and morbid, but which is repellent to all healthy and masculine minds. There is music which by no possibility can be understood and enjoyed by a fool; and there is music which is essentially low and vulgar.

Further, there is that element in music which is most closely connected with its more purely sensuous quality, in which it most nearly resembles the impressions produced by colour. The brain is affected through the ear by certain combinations of sound, as it is affected through the eye by certain combinations of hue. These effects are intimately connected with certain atmospheric, or, as they are called, acoustic phenomena; just as the impressions of colour depend, not merely upon the effect of each single colour upon the retina, but upon the laws of complementary colour, and upon the incessant production of what is termed the spectrum of each tint that is presented to the retina. Hence, in music, the endless variations in the beauty and force of tune, or melody, as such. Hence it is that so much music is dry and dull, just as many combinations of colour are dull, and as many a writer's literary style is dull, or cold, or inexpressive.

Once more, into music the element of elaboration and complication enters, more thoroughly than into any other species of art or of literature. Hence, it furnishes a more eloquent expression of the ideas of law, order and life, than any other of the works of man. To those who are defective in musical organisation, this very elaboration makes music of a complicated structure all the more tedious and incomprehensible; and the same is the result with those whose intellect is dull and whose character is weak. Cultivation, also, is of course necessary for the comprehension and enjoyment of music, in which these ideas of law and order and mysterious vastness are embodied. So it is with all our faculties. The purest natural taste never comprehended all the truth and beauty

of the Elgin marbles without a certain degree of serious study of the laws of the sculptor's art. What uncultured mind ever could perceive the loveliness of the "Odyssey," or of Wordsworth's "Ode on Immortality," or of the "In Memoriam ?”

But granting the presence of the natural musical capacity properly cultivated, and the intelligence, the emotional susceptibility and the healthy activity of the listener, then I say that in those works which unite profound elaboration to intense tunefulness, he finds an expression of all that is best and noblest in his nature, and is lifted into a region of thought and feeling where this present existence seems for the moment to have vanished away. And among such works, the Mass in B Minor stands pre-eminent. It is to the greatest choral writings of other composers what the marbles of the Parthenon are to all other sculpture, and what Shakespeare is to all other poets. Those who look for this preeminence in its songs will be disappointed, admirable as they are. in the succession of its gigantic choruses that it leaves all other music behind, as comparatively slight and inexpressive. They have all the brilliant and masterly clearness of Handel's best choruses, all his tunefulness and propriety of expression; but they excel them in a boundless richness of elaboration and development, in a union of complication and multitudinousness of detail with a perfect unity and simplicity of general effect, and in a power of inventing and working out of orchestral accompaniment which Handel, great above all others, never achieved.

It is

The result is what I can only describe by the words magnificence and splendour. It is not the same thing as the tenderness and graceful beauty and brilliancy of Mozart, nor the passionate power and almost fierce intensity of Beethoven. We wonder how any such combination of elaboration and tune ever came forth from the brain of one man ; just as, when we look up at the stars, we are overwhelmed with a sense of mingled order and loveliness, or as the sight of a superb sunset affects us with a sense of mingled amazement and joy. One feeling, too, is aroused by these choruses to a degree which I imagine is all their own; and that is, a sense of exultation. "I never thought," one says to oneself, as the mighty torrent of sound streams onwards, "that humanity could find a tongue so eloquent." We many of us know what is that strange sensation of excitement and consciousness of hidden power, together with a kind of feeling as if the triviality of life was for the moment ended, which is at times kindled in us by a few lines of poetry, or a few words in prose; and just such, I venture to assure the nonmusical thinker who has given me his attention through these few pages, is the effect of these transcendent choruses; and I am confident that there are thousands and tens of thousands, even in this comparatively unmusical England, who, if they could hear them, would confess that I have not, in what I have said, been guilty of one word of exaggeration.

C.

734

The Atonement of Leam Dundas.

IN HIS RIGHT MIND.

sweet, as some good, careless fellows do.

OTHING is easier to a

clever woman than to catch a heart at the rebound. Samson, blind and sorrowful, lays his weary head in the lap of that watchful Delilah who has been biding her time, knowing that it would come; and when he wakes up again he finds his locks shorn and his strength, with his freedom, gone. Then it is too late. Sorrow, revolt, complaint -all are of no avail. He has nothing for it but to accept the irremediable quietly, and sleep on, determined to find his dreams pleasant and his pillow Others, unfortunately for

themselves, resent the mistake that they have made and the snare into which they have fallen, and cannot, do what they will, reconcile themselves to their disaster or refrain from shaking their chains dismally. Adelaide had been Edgar's Delilah; watchful, patient, respectable. She had bided her time and waited; and now she was reaping her reward. Samson had delivered himself into her hand, and she had bound him with fetters stronger than green withes. The decisive words had been spoken; the needful preliminaries arranged; and a few days now would see the great aim of her life fulfilled, and the crowning stone flung on the cairn of the delusive past. It was a proud moment for her; and all the more in that she owed her success solely to her own tact and determination; for the very fitness of things which had helped to bring this marriage about had been the fitness which she herself had created.