terless!--but where?

THE ISLAND OF THE FAY

Nullus enim locus sine genio est.--_Servius_.

"LA MUSIQUE," says Marmontel, in those "Contes Moraux" (*1) which in all
our translations, we have insisted upon calling "Moral Tales," as if
in mockery of their spirit--"la musique est le seul des talents qui
jouissent de lui-meme; tous les autres veulent des temoins." He here
confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity
for creating them. No more than any other talent, is that for music
susceptible of complete enjoyment, where there is no second party to
appreciate its exercise. And it is only in common with other talents
that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The
idea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly, or
has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point, is,
doubtless, the very tenable one that the higher order of music is
the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The
proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who love
the lyre for its own sake, and for its spiritual uses. But there is one
pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality and perhaps only
one--which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment
of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation of
natural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold aright the glory of
God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, the
presence--not of human life only, but of life in any other form than
that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless--is
a stain upon the landscape--is at war with the genius of the scene. I
love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and
the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy
slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,--I
love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast
animate and sentient whole--a whole whose form (that of the sphere)
is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among
associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediate
sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity, whose thought is that of
a God; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in
immensity, whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance
of the animalculae which infest the brain--a being which we, in
conseque