ody, and Harmony.
_Rhythm_ is the pulse of time; the tones register its heart beats and
manifest its soul, its _melody_; _harmony_ is the concurrent sympathy or
antagonism elicited by its annunciation in the invisible realm in which
it moves. Unity is first manifested in the rhythm; then, as the tones
_consecutively_ follow each other, the succeeding one always born and
growing immediately from the one just expiring, in the consequent
_melody_; and lastly, as the tones progress _simultaneously_, hand to
hand, and heart to heart, with the single line or passion of the melody,
conditioned and responding to it in all its varied phases--(the
individual and collective, the soul and its surroundings)--the grand
diapason of harmony rolls on--and the magic _unity_ of music is
complete! Hence, part of its power over men. But like all organic, basic
life-principles, its relations with the human spirit defy analysis. Its
unitive influence cannot be denied, even by those who do not feel its
charm. Let them but consider that no public act of humanity implying the
_primeval unity_ of the race, is considered complete without it, and
they must be convinced that it is pre-eminently the art of social union.
When an entire nation collects as a band of brothers to resist
aggression, to repel invasion, it is music, the unitive art, which
animates them to seek death itself to resist wrongs which would burden
all, its very rhythm keeping in massive _unison_, _together_, the tread
of thousands, causing all hearts to throb in _one_ measure, and so
regulating the most heterogenous masses that they move as it were as
_one_ mighty man. And in all public acknowledgments of our collective
dependence as _one_ race upon the _one_ God, music alone is considered
sufficiently symbolic and tender to express the universal sense of
helplessness, of generic trust in His marvellous mercy.

Music blesses the innocent bride with the first chant of forever
_united_, and consequently holy love. It hallows at the baptismal font
the introduction of the infant into the mystical _oneness_ of the
children of Christ. Even at the grave it softens human sorrow by its
heavenly whisperings of _eternal union_ in the bosom of Infinite love.

France is ever ready to receive Italian, Sclavonic, and German artists
with characteristic and appreciative enthusiasm; and America applauds
with _naive_ rapture that skill, as yet, alas! foreign to her native
soil.

'I pant for the