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the organ of speech. This organ is capa- | divided according to the Arabian gamut, ble of carrying out all the various modu- he caused such a one to be brought, and lations of sound required for language. to his great astonishment he found inHere then is the first rough foundation tervals which in our European system do for music. The lowering or raising of the not exist at all. The Arabs divide their voice, to give more or less emphasis to a octave into twenty-four intervals, while word, together with all those sounds which the Europeans have only twelve for the every nation on the globe has appropriated same space, and no wonder that the untuto itself, to express more animated feelings, tored ear of the Frenchman could not conform the first elements of music. These ceive those nice and acute variations of various sounds have but to be regulated sound. and properly defined, and we have the materials which form our scale or gamut, from which again our whole system of music has been derived. It is evident from a good many proofs, that our music has come, together with most other arts and sciences, from the East, the original seat of all learning. In the heart of Asia we find even now a kind of music which to a European ear seems but a combination of discordant sounds, but which to the less refined but more accurate ears of the native, possesses every requisite of a good melody. The same confusion seems to exist in what little we know of African music.

Villoteau, a traveller in the East, and a musician to whom the history of music is under a great many obligations, made it his special object to collect the various songs of the Orient. On his arrival at Cairo he engaged for this purpose an Arabian music-master, who, following the custom of the Arabian professors, only sung the airs, leaving it to his pupil to remember them as best he could. Villoteau instantly sat to work and wrote them down, but noticing now and then some slight detonations in his master's voice, he took the liberty to correct them in his manuscript. After having finished his task he tried to sing the air which the Arab had just taught him, but he had only sung a few notes when he was arrested by the Arab, who indignantly told him that he, Villoteau, sung false. Great discussions took place on this matter between master and pupil; each one assured the other that his intonations were irreproachable, and that he could not hear the other's music without experiencing great pain in his ears. At last Villoteau thought there might be some singular cause for this disagreement, and knowing that the fingerboard of the Eoud, (Arabian guitar,) was

The music of the Chinese is more like our own, and most resembling to the old Scotch melodies. With these Celestials everything seems to be lost in the heavens, or in grey antiquity, and no wonder that they should boast of having had as early as 2776 before the Christian era, a well-organized system of music. They say that Hoang-ty, who lived at that time, and who had conquered the empire, not finding any more enemies to conquer, applied himself to improving the moral condition of his subjects. He found their music in a most deplorable condition, or rather he found nothing deserving of that name, and therefore gave orders to Lyng-lun, a principal personage of his court, to undertake the regulating of the Chinese music. This worthy, after the usual number of prostrations, went for this purpose to Si-joung, a

country in the northwest of China, where music was known to have reached a much higher state of cultivation. On the high mountains of that country grows a beautiful bamboo. Large knots divide this bamboo into different parts, forming a kind of tube. Lyng-lun accidentally took one of these tubes, cut it between two knots, took out the marrow, blew in it, and a sound issued which was exactly the pitch of his voice, when he spoke unaffected by any passion. Not far from this place is the source of the stream Hoang-tu, which, bubbling from the earth, produces a peculiar sound. Lyng-lun, to his greatest astonishment, discovered that this sound was in unison with the one he had drawn from his tube.

But the miracle does not cease here. A Foung-hoang, a bird, like the Phoenix of other nations no longer in existence, came, accompanied by his mate, and perched on a neighboring arbor. There the male produced a sound, again in unison to that of the tube and of the stream; he then pro

duced a number of sounds which formed among themselves six semitones; the female added to these six other semitones, and while the two alternately sang, Lynglun cut twelve tubes of different size, in unison with the twelve semitones furnished by the voice of the birds, and, delighted with his discovery, he carried his tubes to the emperor, who commanded that forthwith these twelve sounds, found in so marvellous a manner, should form the gamut of the Chinese music. And in reality, the whole music of the Chinese is founded on this system, and with but very slight modifications it has remained thus stationary to this day.

It would seem, if we except the Chinese, that music, in its migration from east to west, has gradually lost the minor intervals, and come down to us in a more condensed shape, and though quarter-tones have been employed during the last century by several celebrated singers, this has been done rather to excite astonishment, than to enrich our present system.

Very often it has been advanced that even in the animal world there exists a great susceptibility for music; and that if proper attention were directed to this fact, good results might be derived from it. We differ from this, because it is our opinion that the true susceptibility for music is founded on a power of combination, which is rooted with reason in one and the same unity.

This is clear from the fact, that the development of the taste for music goes hand in hand with the development of the mind. For this reason music appears in the most intimate relation with poetry, which latter in this union, as song or ballad, seems to make the greatest impression on the heart. But for the same reason music finds its most appropriate field where depth of feeling is predominant, and where through the power of imagination, life has been elevated to a higher and nobler sphere. As the mind thus becomes more active in communicating its thoughts, and the feelings endeavor to indicate their existence with that same activity,

Language swells into song.

Led only by his own impulse, man, in all degrees of civilization, has introduced music into life, where his own feelings

were more than ordinarily excited, or where it was his object to excite those of others. That vocal music has in this respect the advantage over its twin-sister, "instrumental music," is not to be wondered at, when we consider that the latter is entirely the creation of fancy, and that it requires "the wood" to act as conductor to the minds of those who have not been gifted with that degree of susceptibility which Nature has bestowed upon others.

There are people who are indifferent to, nay, almost annoyed by the shortest strain of music, if the least action of their mind, to follow the combinations of sound, is required of them. There are others again, who, though not indifferent to music, derive but little pleasure from it, save that sensual delight which they experience, perhaps, in eating a favorite dish. But there are still others, with whom a proper appreciation of music seems to have been born. They enter at once into the mysterious spirit of that art, fathom its windings, and seem to make it a part of their very existence. To these belong, together with the true lovers of music, all the great masters and composers of the different ages. They are the ones to foster music, to cultivate and develope it in all its branches; through their agency, music has been brought to that degree of perfection which it now possesses. Indeed, it fairly outstrips all other arts in this respect. Continually improving, without exhausting-on the contrary, always enriching-its means, it advances steadily on the path to perfection, and it is impossible to foretell when this development will have reached its zenith.

But with this unceasing progress, music has partaken in a certain degree of a mysticism, which threatens to estrange it altogether to the hearts of those who, by nature, have not been endowed with those extraordinary gifts, and who, not being able to follow their masters with the rapidity necessary to understand and appreciate music in its highest spheres, are content to remain stationary, and thus increase the distance between themselves and their more favored guides. Thus, music loses only in influence what it gains in means; and nothing remains for those masters but to descend from their lofty pinnacles, and

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Music is not destined to reproduce, by imitation, certain known sensations; it has no model, after which to form itself, nor has it one to compare itself to. Inde pendent it stands there, the pure fabric of the imagination. Entirely different from painting, which limits the imagination of the artist by the obligation to imitate Nature; and different alike from poetry, which, in its boldest flights of fancy, is only intelligible by the analogy of its thoughts to certain general ideas; music makes never a deeper impression than when it absolutely resembles nothing; when it creates, at one and the same time, the principal idea and the accessory means which serve to develope it.

For this reason, music is the most spiritual of all the arts, and might well be placed above poetry, sculpture, and painting. But it has other advantages to boast of: "It is a truly democratic art." The enjoyment of other arts requires a certain preparation and cultivation of the mind, which not every one possesses the means to acquire. These are therefore chiefly confined to the higher classes of society. But music belongs to high and low, poor and rich; all are alike under its influence, and with the lower class it fills a vacuum which the want of education has left. It stands between the prose and poetry of life.

Here is the proper place to correct a popular error. The fact that music is so easy of access, that it requires so little preparation in other branches of education, has rallied under its banners a good many who enjoy, apparently, benefits in social respect to which, on account of inferior education, they are not properly entitled. This has given rise to the belief that music actually prohibits the cultivation of other capacities of the mind, and consequently people who are unconsciously under its influence still despise the art, because so little mind is required to practise it. We have proved already that this is the mere independence of the art, and consider it

rather as an advantage than otherwise; but we can give the most brilliant instances which refute the assertion. From the earliest times down to the present day, the pages of history are crowded with names of men who to their capacity for music added talents of the most brilliant and valuable description. From Plato and Pythagoras to Beethoven and Mendelssohn, there were always men who, with the highest order of talents, did not disdain to practise music, and who considered it as a heavenly gift, none the less valuable because of its universality.

Another advantage of music over its sister arts consists in its incapacity to describe, by means of it, anything immoral. It can be brought in connection with voluptuousness, frivolity, and all the other abominations which mankind are subject to; but "music in itself can never be made the interpreter of immorality." Music the almighty, the all-powerful, possesses no means to gratify the lascivious, the licentious; and through its mysterious strains breathes nothing but purest good.

Joy and pain are the nearest emotions of the human breast which can be made the subjects of representation in music. Joy and pain are the emotions which most demand music for an interpreter. Who has not experienced that inward, serene joy, which to confide to a human breast, would have been robbing it of its holiest charm? But to whisper these emotions to the vibrations of the air, to breathe such delight in the vague undulations of musical sounds, only enhances such pleasure, while at the same time it relieves the heart of a burden which threatened to break it. And to the lone wanderer through the chequered path of life it is everything. When afflicted, he receives sympathy and consolation; when happy, his joy is consecrated in its purity by the sounds in which he vents his delight; in either joy or sorrow, when words lose their power, it is then that the true office of music begins, and in its strains it conveys those indefinite feelings to others which, arousing in their hearts the same indefinite emotions, still give evidence that the one has been understood by the other.

If Nature has the most manifold graduations for these emotions, music has none

the less so. It can express mourning and

sadness, lamenting and sighing, despair | different arts; while painting, statuary, and poetry have, in consequence of their narrow limits, only reproduced a certain number of principal ideas, which for centuries have only varied in form.

and melancholy, in all their various shades. Grace and sweetness, the beautiful and noble, the sentimental and grand, the pompous and pathetic, the marvellous and the tragic, the joyous and the comic, playfulness and gayety, rejoicing and wild jubilee, they all can be expressed in music. But it is not its office to describe, like poetry and painting, single and isolated pictures; it takes up the inner state of our heart in its wholeness, and portrays it after its own laws of association as a perfect æsthetical whole. Hence the insufficiency of the socalled descriptive music to convey to others the ideas it intends to represent. The painter can represent a beautiful scene, the poet can describe it, but music can only give the sensations of the heart produced by witnessing such a one. But our greatest composers have fallen into such an error. Beethoven has given us "The Battle of Vittoria," one of the weakest of his compositions. We need hardly mention such abortions as "The Battle of Prague," "The Falls of Niagara," and a hundred other compositions, which only serve to despoil music of that garb which forms its greatest charm.

If we compare the advancement of music to that of other arts, we find that, on account of its less positive ideas, it has been more subject to transformations, which seemed to make of it just as many

The poems of Homer and Pindar, Anacreon and Virgil, live again in the works of our modern poets; our bas-reliefs and statues differ only from the products of the ancient master's chisel by the superiority of one over the others. Painting has only been enriched during centuries by the science of perspective and coloring; but what is there in common between the music of the Greeks, the Hindoos, the Arabs, the Chinese, the harmonic psalmody of the middle age, the counterpoint of the sixteenth century, and the art of a Beethoven, Von Weber, Mendelssohn, Bartholdy, and Rossini? With these different nations, during these different epochs, music seems to have had neither the same principles nor the same destination. One nation considered it as a science, another as an art, and a third as the mere language of the heart. As an art, it has the same object with its sister arts. It is intended to reproduce on others an impression which any particular object has made on the mind of the artist; save that in those the object represented speaks first to the mind and then to the heart, while in music it speaks first to the heart, and through that to the mind.

H. S. S.

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EVERY presidential election in this Republic must be a memorable event. That of the year eighteen hundred and fortyeight now appears among the most memorable of the past. By it the spirit of monarchy has been exorcised from the body politic, and the Republic has been made whole. The sordid spirits of corruption and the frantic demons of rapine and bloodthirsty war, have been banished by a moral exorcism. Visions of magnificent empires and of barbaric pearl and gold have faded, and the public mind embraces rational views of patriotism and philanthropy. A faction which had long occupied a bad eminence in the government, engrossing all powers and honors and emoluments for selfish ends, setting war, peace and all domestic interests to sale for votes, appropriating the spoils of the people for the enrichment of a party, and in the crucible of a corrupt patronage, transforming official fidelity into lucre, was suddenly hurled from its high places by the quiet energy of the popular will. This signal revolution has given to history many lessons worthy of remembrance. One of them deserves to be set conspicuously before the eyes of politicians and people, for encouragement to the patriotic, and for a warning to the factious and corrupt. The means on which the deposed faction has relied to perpetuate its ascendency, have utterly and disastrously failed. To point out these ineffectual means is to point out, in part, the lesson of this faction's fall.

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| Plaquemines and Pennsylvania frauds; debased by the recent and successful pursuit of the most illustrious character in the republic, with calumnies more damning to those who used them than to him who fell under them, "like a deer stricken by many princes;" and fettered by the edicts of an unelected congress of placemen and place-hunters. Such an administration became, by the law of its origin, the representative of a faction and the executive of its unscrupulous will. Too infirm to expiate the original sin in which it was born, by a resolute devotion to the public good, it sought to escape retribution and to make its days long in the land by honoring its fathers, the confederates who had brought it into being, by the prostitution of public trusts. Demagogues and partisan brawlers, the managers of caucuses and the accomplices in fraud, were promoted. The heads of the Baltimore Convention soon rejoiced in diplomatic appointments, collectorships or attorneyships. Bureaux, post-offices, and, eventually, the highest grades of the army were thrown open to such as had the gift of knowing their master's crib. In every department, the offices which the laws had inscribed, like golden apples, "to the most worthy," were thrown down within the party ring to be scrambled for by the most greedy. "To the victors belong the spoils," was the admitted law of patronage, and thus the vast treasures of the government were converted into innumerable bribes. Thus proclamation was made of pay and plunder to all the Dalgetties of political warfare, and a reward was offered to all the Vicars of Bray. To signalize

The party which styles itself "Demo- | cratic foisted into power, in 1844, an administration deeply stained with the

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