n
comprehend its mysteries, its divine inspirations, and can alone
speak to the senses of its intellectual revelations. Although
spirits may feed upon it as we do upon air, yet it may not nourish
all mortal men; and those privileged few alone, who have drawn from
its heavenly source, may aspire to hold spiritual converse with it.
How few are these! for, like the thousands who marry for love, and
who profess love, whilst love will single out but one amongst them,
so also will thousands court Music, whilst she turns a deaf ear to
all but the chosen few. She, too, like her sister arts, is based
upon morality--_that fountain-head of genuine invention_! And would
you know the true principle on which the arts _may_ be won? It is
to bow to their immutable terms, to lay all passion and vexation of
spirit prostrate at their feet, and to approach their divine
presence with a mind so calm and so void of littleness as to be
ready to receive the dictates of fantasy and the revelations of
truth. Thus the art becomes a divinity, man approaches her with
religious feelings, his inspirations are God's divine gifts, and
his aim fixed by the same hand from above which helps him to attain
it."

And he adds:--"We know not whence our knowledge is derived. The seeds
which lie dormant in us require the dew, the warmth, and the electricity
of the soil to spring up, to ripen into thought, and to break forth.
Music is the electrical soil in which the mind thrives, thinks, and
invents. Music herself teaches us harmony; for _one_ musical thought
bears upon the whole kindred of ideas, and each is linked to the other,
closely and indissolubly, by the ties of harmony."

Hearken to proof of the truth of this eloquent and beautiful description
of music.

(WALTZ.--Beethoven.)

The talents of a Haydyn and Mozart raised instrumental composition in
Germany to an astonishing elevation; and Beethoven may be said not only
to have maintained the art in that stupendous altitude, but even in some
respects to have brought it to a still higher degree of perfection.
"Haydyn," says Reichardt, "drew his quartets from the pure source of his
sweet and unsophisticated nature, his captivating simplicity and
cheerfulness. In these works he is still without an equal. Mozart's
mightier genius and richer imagination took a more extended range, and
embodie