gures of the lyre and
other musical symbols.

The whole base of the instrument, in the intervals of the figures
described, is covered with elaborate carvings. Groups of musical
instruments, standing out almost detached from the background, occupy
the panels. Ancient and modern, clustered with careless grace and quaint
variety, from the violin down to a string of sleigh-bells, they call up
all the echoes of forgotten music, such as the thousand-tongued organ
blends together in one grand harmony.

The instrument is placed upon a low platform, the outlines of which are
in accordance with its own. Its whole height is about sixty feet, its
breadth forty-eight feet, and its average depth twenty-four feet. Some
idea of its magnitude may be got from the fact that the wind-machinery
and the swell-organ alone fill up the whole recess occupied by the
former organ, which was not a small one. All the other portions of the
great instrument come forward into the hall.

In front of its centre stands Crawford's noble bronze statue of
Beethoven, the gift of our townsman, Mr. Charles C. Perkins. It might be
suggested that so fine a work of Art should have a platform wholly to
itself; but the eye soon reconciles itself to the position of the
statue, and the tremulous atmosphere which surrounds the vibrating organ
is that which the almost breathing figure would seem to delight in, as
our imagination invests it with momentary consciousness.

As we return to the impression produced by the grand _facade_, we are
more and more struck with the subtile art displayed in its adaptations
and symbolisms. Never did any structure we have looked upon so fully
justify Madame de Stael's definition of architecture, as "frozen music."
The outermost towers, their pillars and domes, are all _square_, their
outlines thus passing without too sudden transitions from the sharp
square angles of the vaulted ceiling and the rectangular lines of the
walls of the hall itself into the more central parts of the instrument,
where a smoother harmony of outline is predominant. For in the great
towers, which step forward, as it were, to represent the meaning of the
entire structure, the lines are all curved, as if the slight discords
which gave sharpness and variety to its less vital portions were all
resolved as we approached its throbbing heart. And again, the half
fantastic repetitions of musical forms in the principal outlines--the
lyre-like shape of the bases of th