vibrating to another, when
it is not struck itself, and uttering its voice of concord simply
because the concord is in it and it feels the pulses on the air to which
it cannot be silent. Nay, the solid mountains and their giant masses of
rock shall answer; catching, as they will, the bray of horns or the
stunning blast of cannon, rolling it across from one top to another in
reverberating pulses, till it falls into bars of musical rhythm and
chimes and cadences of silver melody. I have heard some fine music, as
men are wont to speak--the play of orchestras, the anthems of choirs,
the voices of song that moved admiring nations. But in the lofty passes
of the Alps I heard a music overhead from God's cloudy orchestra, the
giant peaks of rock and ice, curtained in by the driving mist and only
dimly visible athwart the sky through its folds, such as mocks all
sounds our lower worlds of art can ever hope to raise. I stood (excuse
the simplicity) calling to them, in the loudest shouts I could raise,
even till my power was spent, and listening in compulsory trance to
their reply. I heard them roll it up through their cloudy worlds of
snow, sifting out the harsh qualities that were tearing in it as demon
screams of sin, holding on upon it as if it were a hymn they were fining
to the ear of the great Creator, and sending it round and round in long
reduplications of sweetness, minute after minute; till finally receding
and rising, it trembled, as it were, among the quick gratulations of
angels, and fell into the silence of the pure empyrean. I had never any
conception before of what is meant by _quality_ in sound. There was more
power upon the soul in one of those simple notes than I ever expect to
feel from anything called music below, or ever can feel till I hear them
again in the choirs of the angelic world. I had never such a sense of
purity, or of what a simple sound may tell of purity by its own pure
quality; and I could not but say, O my God, teach me this! Be this in me
forever! And I can truly affirm that the experience of that hour has
consciously made me better able to think of God ever since--better able
to worship. All other sounds are gone; the sounds of yesterday, heard in
the silence of enchanted multitudes, are gone; but that is with me
still, and I hope will never cease to ring in my spirit till I go down
to the slumber of silence itself.

SAMUEL BUTLER

(1612-1680)

A pretty picture of the time is the