t whatever, or accept it as a pleasing dream;
and they forget that what we call a miracle may be as truly an offspring
of immutable law as the dew and the sunshine,--failing to learn of the
loadstone, which attracts to itself splinters of steel contrary to all
the commonly observed laws of gravitation, the simple truth that man
also may become a magnet, and, by the power of the divine currents
passing through him, do many things astonishing to every-day experience.
The feats of a vulgar thaumaturgy, designed to make the ignorant stare,
may well be dispensed with. But the fact that "spiritualism," with all
its crudities of doctrine and errors of practice, has spread over
Christendom with a rapidity to which the history of religious beliefs
affords no parallel, shows that the realization of supernatural
influences is an absolute need of the human heart. The soul of the
earlier forms of worship dies out of them, as this faith dies out, or
becomes merely traditional; and no new system can look to fill their
places without it.

_Letters of_ FELIX MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY _from 1833 to
1847._ Two Volumes. Philadelphia: F. Leypoldt.

There are many people who make very little discrimination between one
musician and another,--who discern no great gulf between Mendelssohn and
Meyerbeer, between Rossini and Romberg, between Spohr and Spontini: not
in respect of music, but of character; of character in itself, and not
as it may develop itself in chaste or florid, sentimental, gay,
devotional or dramatic musical forms. And as yet we have very little
help in our efforts to gain insight into the inner nature of our great
musical artists. Of Meyerbeer the world knows that he was vain, proud,
and fond of money,--but whether he had soul or not we do not know; the
profound religiousness of Handel, who spent his best years on
second-rate operas, and devoted his declining energies to oratorio, we
have to guess at rather than reach by direct disclosure; and till Mr.
Thayer shall take away the mantle which yet covers his Beethoven, we
shall know but little of the interior nature of that wonderful man. But
Mendelssohn now stands before us, disclosed by the most searching of all
processes, his own letters to his own friends. And how graceful, how
winning, how true, tender, noble is the man! We have not dared to write
a notice of these two volumes while we were fresh from their perusal,
lest the fascination of that genial, Christian p