sn't it?" said Ferdinand; but
Lewis's anger, long restrained, broke out.

"'"Oh! confusion on that wretched Professor!" he cried. "What a
terrible, terrible disappointment! Where are all the revelations we
expected? What became of the learned, instructive discourse which we
thought he would deliver to us, as to disciples at Sais?"

"'"At the same time," said Ferdinand, "we have seen some very ingenious
mechanical inventions, curious and interesting from a musical point of
view. Clearly, the flute-player is the same as Vaucanson's well-known
machine; and a similar mechanism applied to the fingers of the female
figure is, I suppose, what enables her to bring out those really
beautiful tones from her instrument. The way in which all the machines
work together is really astonishing."

"'"It is exactly that which drives me so wild," said Lewis. "All that
machine-music (in which I include the Professor's own playing) makes
every bone in my body ache. I am sure I do not know when I shall get
over it! The fact of any human being's doing anything in association
with those lifeless figures which counterfeit the appearance and
movements of humanity has always, to me, something fearful, unnatural,
T may say terrible, about it. I suppose it would be possible, by means
of certain mechanical arrangements inside them, to construct automatons
which should dance, and then to set them to dance with human beings,
and twist and turn about in all sorts of figures; so that we should
have a living man putting his arms about a lifeless partner of wood,
and whirling round and round with her, or rather it. Could you look at
such a sight, for an instant, without horror? At all events, all
machine-music is to me a thing altogether monstrous and abominable; and
a good stocking-loom is, in my opinion, worth all the most perfect and
ingenious musical clocks in the universe put together. For is it the
breath, merely, of the performer on a wind-instrument, or the skilful,
supple fingers of the performer on a stringed instrument, which evoke
those tones which lay upon us a spell of such power, and awaken that
inexpressible feeling, akin to nothing else on earth, the sense of a
distant spirit world, and of our own higher life therein? Is it not,
rather, the mind, the soul, the heart, which merely employ those bodily
organs to give forth into our external life that which is felt in our
inner depths? so that it can be communicated to others, and awaken
k