of things. What is called the
musical scale, or octave, is fixed in the original appointments of sound
just as absolutely and definitely as the colors of the rainbow or prism
in the optical properties and laws of light. And the visible objects of
the world are not more certainly shaped and colored to us under the
exact laws of light and the prism, than they are tempered and toned, as
objects audible, to give distinctions of sound by their vibrations in
the terms of the musical octave. It is not simply that we hear the sea
roar and the floods clap their hands in anthems of joy; it is not that
we hear the low winds sigh, or the storms howl dolefully, or the ripples
break peacefully on the shore, or the waters dripping sadly from the
rock, or the thunders crashing in horrible majesty through the pavements
of heaven; not only do all the natural sounds we hear come to us in
tones of music as interpreters of feeling, but there is hid in the
secret temper and substance of all matter a silent music, that only
waits to sound and become a voice of utterance to the otherwise
unutterable feeling of our heart--a voice, if we will have it, of love
and worship to the God of all.

First, there is a musical scale in the laws of the air itself, exactly
answering to the musical sense or law of the soul. Next, there is in all
substances a temperament of quality related to both; so that whatever
kind of feeling there may be in a soul--war and defiance, festivity and
joy, sad remembrance, remorse, pity, penitence, self-denial, love,
adoration--may find some fit medium of sound in which to express itself.
And, what is not less remarkable, connected with all these forms of
substances there are mathematical laws of length and breadth, or
definite proportions of each, and reflective angles, that are every way
as exact as those which regulate the colors of the prism, the images of
the mirror, or the telescopic light of astronomic worlds--mathematics
for the heart as truly as for the head.

It cannot be said that music is a human creation, and as far as the
substances of the world are concerned, a mere accident. As well can it
be said that man creates the colors of the prism, and that they are not
in the properties of the light, because he shapes the prism by his own
mechanical art. Or if still we doubt; if it seems incredible that the
soul of music is in the heart of all created being; then the laws of
harmony themselves shall answer, one string