the wondrous being to whom
she had given birth, she encompassed him with a holy music, like the
afflatus of a continual inspiration; and wondrous tones spake of the
mysteries of her unceasing activity. There has come down to us an echo
from the mysterious depths of those primeval days--that beautiful
notion of the music of the spheres, which, when as a boy, I first read
of it in 'The Dream of Scipio,' filled me with the deepest and most
devout reverence. I often used to listen, on quiet moonlight nights, to
hear if those wondrous tones would come to me, borne on the wings
of the whispering airs. However, as I said to you already, those
nature-tones have not yet all departed from this world, fur we have an
instance of their survival, and occurrence in that 'Music of the Air'
or 'Voice of the Demon,' mentioned by a writer on Ceylon--a sound
which so powerfully affects the human system, that even the least
impressionable persons, when they hear those tones of nature imitating,
in such a terrible manner, the expression of human sorrow and
suffering, are struck with painful compassion and profound terror!
Indeed, I once met with an instance of a phenomenon of a similar kind
myself, at a place in East Prussia. I had been living there for some
time; it was about the end of autumn, when, on quiet nights, with a
moderate breeze blowing, I used distinctly to hear tones, sometimes
resembling the deep, stopped, pedal pipe of an organ, and sometimes
like the vibrations from a deep, soft-toned bell. I often
distinguished, quite clearly, the low F, and the fifth above it (the
C), and not seldom the minor third above, E flat, was perceptible as
well; and then this tremendous chord of the seventh, so woeful and so
solemn, produced on one the effect of the most intense sorrow, and even
of terror!

"'"There is, about the imperceptible commencement, the swelling and the
gradual dying of those nature-tones a something which has a most
powerful and indescribable effect upon us; and any instrument which
should be capable of producing this would, no doubt, affect us in a
similar way. So that I think the harmonica comes the nearest, as
regards its tone, to that perfection, which is to be measured by its
influence on our minds. And it is fortunate that this instrument (which
chances to be the very one which imitates those nature-tones with such
exactitude) happens to be just the very one which is incapable of
lending itself to frivolity or ost