ping this language of the emotions. Having its root, as we have
endeavoured to show, in those tones, intervals, and cadences of speech
which express feeling--arising by the combination and intensifying of
these, and coming finally to have an embodiment of its own--music has
all along been reacting upon speech, and increasing its power of
rendering emotion. The use in recitative and song of inflections more
expressive than ordinary ones, must from the beginning have tended to
develop the ordinary ones. Familiarity with the more varied combinations
of tones that occur in vocal music can scarcely have failed to give
greater variety of combination to the tones in which we utter our
impressions and desires. The complex musical phrases by which composers
have conveyed complex emotions, may rationally be supposed to have
influenced us in making those involved cadences of conversation by which
we convey our subtler thoughts and feelings.

That the cultivation of music has no effect on the mind, few will be
absurd enough to contend. And if it has an effect, what more natural
effect is there than this of developing our perception of the meanings
of inflections, qualities, and modulations of voice; and giving us a
correspondingly increased power of using them? Just as mathematics,
taking its start from the phenomena of physics and astronomy, and
presently coming to be a separate science, has since reacted on physics
and astronomy to their immense advancement--just as chemistry, first
arising out of the processes of metallurgy and the industrial arts, and
gradually growing into an independent study, has now become an aid to
all kinds of production--just as physiology, originating out of medicine
and once subordinate to it, but latterly pursued for its own sake, is in
our day coming to be the science on which the progress of medicine
depends;--so, music, having its root in emotional language, and
gradually evolved from it, has ever been reacting upon and further
advancing it. Whoever will examine the facts will find this hypothesis
to be in harmony with the method of civilisation everywhere displayed.

It will scarcely be expected that much direct evidence in support of
this conclusion can be given. The facts are of a kind which it is
difficult to measure, and of which we have no records. Some suggestive
traits, however, may be noted. May we not say, for instance, that the
Italians, among whom modern music was earliest cultivated, a