heart never ceases until stilled by the touch of
death, when the spirit, led by God, enters upon the waveless ocean of an
immeasurable eternity, where past and future meet in the eternal
present. Time with its rhythmic measures is then no more. The necessity
of 'effort and rest,' 'exertion and repose,' will exist no longer. What
the fuller music of that higher life is to be, 'it has not yet entered
into the heart of man to conceive.' But if the very _imperfection_ of
our being has been rendered so full of charm to us in the order and
proportion with which it records its law, 'effort and repose,' 'life and
death'--what may we not expect when this mortal shall have put on
immortality? We should think of this when that saddest of human sounds,
'it beats no more; it measures time no longer'--knells upon our ear the
silence of the throbbing, passionate heart.

Nor is inanimate nature without the quickening breath of Rhythm. It
cadences the dash of the wave, chimes in the flash of the oar, patters
in the drops of rain, whispers in the murmurings of the forest leaves,
leaps in the dash of the torrent, wails through the sighing of the
restless winds, and booms in the claps and crashes of heaven's thunders.

Only through _succession_ do we arrive at the idea of time, and through
a continual _being and ceasing to be_ are its steppings made sensible to
us. It is thus literally true, as sung by the Poet, that 'we take no
note of Time but from its loss.' Happy are we if so used that it may
mark our eternal progress.

There is but little mystery in the art of keeping time, since we may at
once gather a correct notion of it from the vibrations of the pulse, or
from our manner of walking. If we listen to the sound of our own step,
we find it equal and regular, corresponding with what is termed common
time in music. Probably the time in which we walk is governed by the
action of the heart, and those who step alike have pulses beating in the
same time. To walk faster than this gives the sensation of hurry; to
walk slower, that of loitering. The mere recurrence of sounds at regular
intervals by no means constitutes the properties of _musical_ time;
accent is necessary to parcel them out into those portions which Rhythm
and the ear approve. If we listen to the trotting of a horse or the
tread of our own feet, we cannot but notice that each alternate step is
louder than the other--by which we throw the sounds into the order of
common time