e
to offer up the charitable prayers necessary for their deliverance,
breathed through their notes. Sometimes a despair so inconsolable
is stamped upon them, that we feel ourselves present at some Byronic
tragedy, oppressed by the anguish of a Jacopo Foscari, unable to survive
the agony of exile. In some we hear the shuddering spasms of suppressed
sobs. Some of them, in which the black keys are exclusively taken, are
acute and subtle, and remind us of the character of his own gaiety,
lover of atticism as he was, subject only to the higher emotions,
recoiling from all vulgar mirth, from coarse laughter, and from low
enjoyments, as we do from those animals more abject than venomous, whose
very sight causes the most nauseating repulsion in tender and sensitive
natures.

An exceeding variety of subjects and impressions occur in the great
number of his Mazourkas. Sometimes we catch the manly sounds of the
rattling of spurs, but it is generally the almost imperceptible rustling
of crape and gauze under the light breath of the dancers, or the
clinking of chains of gold and diamonds, that maybe distinguished. Some
of them seem to depict the defiant pleasure of the ball given on the eve
of battle, tortured however by anxiety for, through the rhythm of the
dance, we hear the sighs and despairing farewells of hearts forced to
suppress their tears. Others reveal to us the discomfort and secret
ennui of those guests at a fete, who find it in vain to expect that
the gay sounds will muffle the sharp cries of anguished spirits.
We sometimes catch the gasping breath of terror and stifled fears;
sometimes divine the dim presentiments of a love destined to perpetual
struggle and doomed to survive all hope, which, though devoured by
jealousy and conscious that it can never be the victor, still disdains
to curse, and takes refuge in a soul-subduing pity. In others we feel as
if borne into the heart of a whirlwind, a strange madness; in the midst
of the mystic confusion, an abrupt melody passes and repasses, panting
and palpitating, like the throbbing of a heart faint with longing,
gasping in despair, breaking in anguish, dying of hopeless, yet
indignant love. In some we hear the distant flourish of trumpets, like
fading memories of glories past, in some of them, the rhythm is as
floating, as undetermined, as shadowy, as the feeling with which two
young lovers gaze upon the first star of evening, as yet alone in the
dim skies.

Upon one a