to expel melancholy from the soul.

At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long
latticed room, with a vermilion-and-gold ceiling and walls of
olive-green lacquer, he used to give curious concerts, in which mad
gypsies tore wild music from little zithers, or grave yellow-shawled
Tunisians plucked at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while
grinning negroes beat monotonously upon copper drums, and, crouching
upon scarlet mats, slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed
or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and
horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of
barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's
beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell
unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world
the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of
dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact
with Western civilisations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the
mysterious _juruparis_ of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not
allowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have been
subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the
Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human bones
such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green jaspers
that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness.
He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were
shaken; the long _clarin_ of the Mexicans, into which the performer does
not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh _ture_ of the
Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in
high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three
leagues; the _teponaztli_, that has two vibrating tongues of wood, and
is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from
the milky juice of plants; the _yotl_-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung
in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the
skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went
with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has
left us so vivid a description. The fantastic character of these
instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought
that Art, like Nature, has her monsters, thin