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--and her beautiful lips writhed with scorn | brow, and raised her eyes proudly and steadily as she mutteredto meet his scathing glance.

"What a sham, what a mockery, this humble service, this deferential air-as of a subject to

his sovereign-to one who, if she were, indeed, a queen, would raise him to her throne, and do him homage. Oh! that I were free-I would be free-I would, myself, strike the fetters from these wrists, but that I know thy high and gentle nature would shrink from touch of the crimsoned hand, Ippolyto. Thy weak nature, cousin-fearing God too much to be true to the devil-loving the devil too well to serve God. Fool! that will neither enjoy this world nor the next--"

The frenzy of her vexation broke out in soliloquy, as she arose and hurriedly paced the room, exclaiming passionately

"I would that he were dead-I hate him! this coarse, ugly, corpulent old man! This ox, this beast, this old rhinoceros of an Ernest Dent!-this Quilp, this Caliban, this grizzly old horror! this incubus, this picture of Time in the primer !-this hateful, strong, old man, who will live-I know he will-a hundred years!"

A hand of iron fell heavily upon her shoulder, and turned her round; she turned deadly pale-General Dent stood before her!

There they stood, facing each other; no longer the impassioned lover and his belovedthat was passed years ago; no longer the indulgent husband and the spoiled wife-that was over also; but the exposed, unprincipled woman, and the wronged, stern, old man.

A terrific scene ensues, terminated by the last petty artifice to which, amid the subsequent hurry of her far-reaching revenge, our heroine has leisure to stoop. Her next step is to send for Ippolyto, and throw herself upon his protection; but here she goes a step too far: the young man is honorable, and affectionately reminds his dear cousin of the gratitude due to his friend, and her husband, the General.

She averted and upraised her face. Well had it been for his safety, could he have seen the expression of intense anguish and hellish malignity that tortured that horribly beautiful countenance! He only saw, as she raised and turned away her head, her tiara of rubies flash and gleam like Satan's diadem of fire. She was still and silent for a few minutes, and then, in a quiet, ay, even humble tone, she said

"Leave me, Ippolyto, and return three hours hence, to attend me to the palace.'

Choking with fury at this defeat, she conceives the diabolical purpose of bringher ing, at the same time, death upon cousin, and a shame, worse to him than death, upon her husband. This purpose is effected through her influence with the Grand Duke. We cannot do better than to quote the scene at a fête given to celebrate the recent nuptials of the Grand Duke with the Princess Bianca of Este:

What possessed Ernest Dent? He stood there like a Colossus of iron-that hard, strong, resolute, implacable old man-with a brow of rock and an eye of fire, gazing upon Juliette. He had heard every word she had spoken, and they bad transfixed him. The old man was almost sublime in his deep wrongs and his concentrated rage. His glances, as he con- Drawn up before the vast illuminated front templated her, began to leap like forked light-of the palace, whence issed streams of light ning from under the thunder-cloud that blackened his brow. Juliette quailed before him. She turned away her head and bowed it, until her beautiful ringlets fell around her like a veil, concealing her countenance from his eyes. He caught her wrists with his icy grasp, turned her round, and drew her towards him, looking steadily in her eyes with a lurid glare the while.

She had quailed but one instant, when, quickly recovering herself, she attempted to withdraw her hand from his grasp. He held them with the gripe of a vice, keeping his eyes fixed on her face. Too proud to struggle, she gracefully relaxed her effort, aud seeing that she was detected beyond all possible doubt or duplicity to mend, and that nothing was left her but defiance, though her heart was shuddering and quailing in her bosom, she assumed her almost superhuman self-command, cleared her

and bursts of music, were some hundred carriages. The equipage of the American ambassadress was the last to arrive. Juliette entered the magnificent saloon leaning on the arm of the Signior Ippolyto di Nozzalini. He wore the full-dress uniform of a colonel in the German Hussars. She was arrayed in a splendid white satin, gorgeously wrought with gold. Her long black ringlets fell glittering like jet below her waist; a wreath of diamond rosebuds, with emerald leaves, flashed above her brow. The room was filled with the high and mighty, the brave and the beautiful. It was a scene of royal state, of splendid display, and of voluptuous indulgence. He led her through the whole length of the room, to a seat at the upper end-a chair of polished and gilded ebony, raised on a platform covered with crimson cloth, and canopied by crimson satin fringed with gold. Reader, this was not a

throne, though Juliette assumed it with imperi- | al hauteur. Many such seats as this were arranged about the walls and recesses of the vast saloon. He led her to this regal seat with an air of graceful and stately deference. Her glorious form was thrown out into beautiful relief by the crimson chair and canopy. From the ceiling above this gorgeous chair, hung a large chandelier, with a thousand pendent crystals flashing as they turned a flood of rainbow-tinted light upon the brilliant beauty in the rich chair below. He had taken his stand beside, and a little behind her. While she, with her own superb air of haughty indifference, overlooked the scene below. Her proud eye passed coldly, unconsciously, over the heads of many a fair and noble lady, many a brave and highborn cavalier, to settle with more interest upon a group at the opposite end of the saloon. This group was composed of the Grand Duke Augustus William, his fair young bride, the Grand Duchess Bianca, with the lords and ladies of their suite. Upon the Grand Duke she looked with the cold, scrutinizing glance of a depraved woman upon her doomed but abhorred victim. He wore the rich and tasteful uniform of a general of the German Hussars; yet even this superb dress, the most martial and imposing, the chef d'œuvre of military costume, failed to confer dignity upon one naturally insignificant in form and mean in expression. A shade of loathing stole over the face, and a slight shudder agitated the form of the voluptuous beauty, as she contemplated him. Her eyes next fell upon the form of the young Grand Duchess. She gazed upon her with the interest with which an arrogant and determined woman gazes upon a possible obstacle to her plans. But as she contemplated the delicate figure, the pale face, and cold manner of the young bride, a slight smile, half of scorn, half of triumph, writhed her beautiful lips; and she gracefully elevated her own luxuriously-rounded form to its proudest altitude, then drooping languidly, gave herself up to the web of fascination she was weaving. She reclined forward in her seat, a little on one side, her elbow resting on the arm of the chair, her chin supported on the palm of her hand, her long, black eyelashes drooped upon her cheek, her long, black ringlets sweeping to her lap, her attitude half soft languor, half haughty disdain. A careless looker-on would have pronounced her a proud, indolent beauty half asleep. Yet those veiled eyes never lifted their covert gaze off of one object-the Grand Duke Augustus William. There appeared nothing in that look a Puritan might cavil at. It seemed a dreamy, half-unconscious gaze, tender as love, gentle as charity, earnest as worship. Superficial observers would have supposed her fine eyes merely veiled in languor. None but the victim felt the power of this covert gaze. Let us look at the siren

through the eyes of the Grand Duke Augustus William. Heartily weary of the cold reserve of his bride, who had married his crown and not himself, weary of the flat inanities of the circle arouud them, bored with being obliged to act the gracious to the one and the gallant to the other, his eyes roved wearily round the room for something to rest upon-they were caught, fixed, riveted by one object-the rich, dark, bright, glorious countenance fascinated his gaze; then, the still, long, black, drooping eyelashes piqued his curiosity-he longed to see the soul beneath them. He watched to see them raised; he gazed with interest, with intensity. Those eyelashes were not lifted, did not move, did not even quiver. Yet as he gazed he unconsciously became the subject of a potent influence emanating from themsteady, powerful, piercing to his inmost soul, attracting him irresistibly as destiny. He moved to his fate. A half-defined feeling, as if inanity, apathy, death, were behind and around him, and excitement, exhilaration, life, before him, drawing him forward, lured him on. This was emotion only. Thought was composed. He moved, scarcely knowing at first whither, or to what end he moved.

In ten days from the evening of the royal festival, the beautiful ambassadrice had vanished from the court of, leaving no trace of her flight, a lost Pleiad from Italia's sky. In twelve days from the same date, the Grand Duke of and suite had left the city. She assumed her family name-a name that she had never before been known by-so that there were few, very few, who recognized the beautiful and dangerous Juliette Summers in the powerful and infamous Baroness N—, the mistress of the Grand Duke of — ; that fell woman, whose stupendous crime and awful doom thrilled with horror the whole heart of the Germanic Confederation-whose very skull, taken down from a pole above the city gate, is now, in these phrenological days, exhibited as the chef d'œuvre of demonaic subtlety and malignity. The soul sickens and the heart shudders at this revolting allusion. The story is well known.

In a deplorable state of mind, inert, apathetic, the elasticity of his organization gone, General Dent returns to his once happy home in the Valley of Virginia. Here he is met and welcomed by our old acquaintance Marcus Derby, and his pretty, placid little wife, who present to him his young daughter Julie, Hester's child, now grown to the verge of womahood, and here, his fortune squandered, his political

career ended in undeserved dishonorhumbled, disappointed, worn in mind and body, commences a dawn of peace and

love that spreads itself over the remainder of his yet lengthened days. Julie, on coming of age, impoverishes herself by giving freedom to her slaves, which has the effect to awaken her father from the apathy that had been setting upon his mind. "The old man roused himself up in his strength, like an old lion from his lair, full of vigor, and energy, and enterprise; and happier, far happier than he had been for fifteen long years."

With this conclusion no one will quarrel; but there is a want of skill in the manner of closing. Everything is dovetailed in, with too minute exactness; an impression of the common-place impels the reader to go back to the tender sympathies awakened in the life and death of Hester, and to the excitement produced by the passionate and guileful Juliette, in order to close the volume with that commendation its general tenor deserves.

INFLUENCE OF MUSIC.

WONDERFUL as the influence of music on the human system seems to us, it can hardly be wondered at, when we consider its effect on even inanimate bodies. Pillars and arches, which the force of an actual mechanical power cannot move, tremble by the sounds of the organ's powerful swell; strong walls between which, by way of experiment, chords had been stretched, fell together the moment these chords were set into vibration. It

is hardly necessary to mention here any of the marvellous effects which the ancients ascribed to their music, since we have so many convincing proofs within our own reach. Many a one has, perhaps, observed that by striking a particular note on the piano, he could make those windows of his room clatter, which by the sounding of another, perhaps much more powerful note, remained firm. A string on a guitar would vibrate, the moment that an acoustically related sound would be produced | on some other instrument. Glasses of enormous strength have been broken into a thousand pieces, by merely singing a particular note into them.

Bourdelot mentions in his "Histoire de Musique" some curious illustrations, together with the eye-witnesses thereof, relating to this subject. He speaks of a china ware-room, wherein, by the sustained note of a flute, all the plates, cups and dishes, were set into a trembling motion, and would have undoubtedly been broken, had not the virtuoso discontinued to use his mysterious power. He speaks, also, of a large mirror, which broke suddenly into six pieces, through the sustained unisono of two singers, who were gifted with extraordinarily beautiful voices. We have many examples of the influence of music on animals of low and higher species. Goethe speaks in a little poem, "The Rat-Catcher," of a man who, by means of a peculiar song, accompanied by a few chords on the guitar, enticed all the rats from their hiding-places. The old chronicles of Silesia speak of a blind man,

who, by whistling of a few notes, called all the crabs of a pond from the depth of the water to its surface, and charmed them to any particular spot, in such a manner that they could be caught with the greatest facility. A lady, in New York, could call a mouse from his hidingplace by merely singing a short strain. While the lady continued singing, the mouse would perform all kinds of curious manoeuvres, and the moment the music ceased, the mouse would rush back to his secret abode.

The spider also evinces a great susceptibility to music, evidences of which have been gathered by various writers. Dogs, cats, and other domestic animals, are all more or less influenced by music, and if we believe the authorities of some celebrated writers, some possess this susceptibility to such degree, that they are even differently influenced by different chords. The feeling for rhythm seems to be particularly developed in the horse. It is astonishing, on witnessing the manœuvring of Prussian cavalry, to see the horses execute the manoeuvres before their riders have fairly understood the signal. A Prussian lancer in one of the battles with the French, rode a horse that had been previously captured from the enemy; and the horse had hardly heard the French signals, when it rushed right into the midst of the French squadron, spreading a panic amongst the French, but ultimately causing the capture of its rider. The Leipzig Musical Gazette mentions a dog, whom the key of A major made restless, and whose sensibilities were so wrought upon by a strain in E flat major, that he became crazy and died under the most dreadful couvulsions.

But if music produces such effects on animals, so indifferently organized, need we to wonder at its influence on the human system-a system infinitely superior in its tenderness and susceptibility to that of any animal? Let us think but for a moment of the disagreeable sensation pro

duced by the sharpening of a slate-pencil, the scratching of a fork on a china plate, and many other equally annoying sounds; or let us recall the effect of the rippling of the water, the rustling of the leaves, &c. &c., and if these undefined sounds already produce a definite emotion, how much more capable of doing so is a combination of well-regulated sounds?

Gaillard, in his "Vie de Charlemagne," mentions a lady who, by the notes of the organ, was transported into such a state of ecstasy that she never recovered, but died on the spot.

It would only be a waste of space, were we to recount all the numerous instances of such effects. Almost every one will find, on retrospection of his own life, that he has experienced such influence at one time or other.

These effects are not merely caused by the greater irritability of the nerves, but to use the language of Dr. Schilling, "On the extreme border of nature are those wondrously interwoven fibres, the vibrations of which sound over into the mysterious spirit world."

But this mysterious spirit world forms the apple of discord between the materializers and spiritualizers in the musical world. So much depends, here, on the organization and different intellect of men, that we cannot wonder if on the one side it is insisted upon, that music does not reach beyond the mere sensual conception of it, while on the other side it is just as seriously maintained, that music forms the transition from the material into the spiritual world. Without undertaking here to decide the question by argument, we will continue to cite instances of its effects, and leave music to defend its own cause by force of illustration and convicting proofs.

E. T. A. Hoffmann, the author of "The Magnetizer," "The Golden Pot," &c. &c., thus interprets in his Kreisleriania the effects of various chords upon him:

A flat major. "What rushes so wondrously, so strangely around me? Invisible wings move up and down. I float in fragrant ether. But the odor sparkles midst flaming and mysteriously interwoven circles. They are the friendly spirits who flap their golden wins in gloriously rapturous chords and s unds."

A flat minor. "Ah! They carry me into the land of eternal longing; but as they seize me, the pain awakes, and strives to escape from the breast, as it violently tears them."

E major (first inversion.) "Keep firm, my heart! Break not, touched by the scorching ray which shot through the breast. Up, up, my brave spirit!—move and mount thee into the element that has born thee and is thy home!"

E major. "They have extended to me a magnificent crown, but that which glimmers and sparkles in its diamonds, are the thousand tears I shed, and in its gold there glisten the flames that devoured me. Courage and power,-trust and strength to him, who is appointed to rule the spirit world.”

I have cited this rather as a proof of the height to which, by force of imagination, our susceptibility can be carried, and of the exaggeration mentioned in some former chapter, than for its importance in regard to our subject, and those who have an inclination for this musical transcendentalism, can find a continuation of these effusions in the second volume of the "Phantasie Strecke" (Fancy Sketches.)

Before parting from this chapter we must not omit to give some historical illustration of this subject.

Alessandro Stradella, a celebrated composer of the 17th century, was born at Naples. While yet a young man, and having acquired great reputation at Venice, he was employed by a nobleman of that city to give instruction in music to a young lady of noble birth, named Hortensia. She was beautiful and accomplished, and had been seduced from her parents by this nobleman, who kept her almost a close prisoner. A mutual passion sprung up between the instructor and his pupil, and they agreed to fly together from the house of her oppressor. The enraged Italian, on discovering their flight, vowed that nothing short of their death should satisfy his vengeance; he hired two bravoes, and gave them instructions to follow the fugitives and execute his purpose, wherever they should be found. bravoes proceeded to Naples, the birthplace of Stradella, supposing he would most probably return thither. After a vain search, however, in that city, they

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