rrepressible, unquenchable, immortal soul,
whose every mark is everlasting! Every secret sin committed against it
cries out from the house-tops. Cunning may strive to conceal, will may
determine to smother, love may fondly whisper, "It does not hurt"; but
the soul will not BE outraged. Somewhere, somehow, when and where you
least expect, unconscious, perhaps, to its owner, unrecognized by the
many, visible only to the clear vision, somewhere, somehow, the soul
bursts asunder its bonds. It is but a little song, a tripping of the
fingers over the keys, a drawing of the bow across the strings,--only
that! Only that? It is the protest of the wronged and ignored soul.
It is the outburst of the pent and prisoned soul. All the ache and
agony, all the secret wrong and silent endurance, all the rejected love
and wounded trust and slighted truth, all the riches wasted, all the
youth poisoned, all the hope trampled, all the light darkened,--all
meet and mingle in a mad whirl of waters. They surge and lash and
rage, a wild storm of harmony. Barriers are broken. Circumstance is
not. The soul! the soul! the soul! the wronged and fettered soul! the
freed and royal soul! It alone is king. Lift up your heads, O ye
gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory
shall come in! Tremble, O Tyrant, in your mountain-fastness! Tremble,
Deceiver, in your cavern under the sea! Your victim is your accuser.
Your sin has found you out. Your crime cries to Heaven. You have
condemned and killed the just. You have murdered the innocent in
secret places, and in the noonday sun the voice of their blood crieth
unto God from the ground. There is no speech nor language. There is no
will nor design. The seal of silence is unbroken. But unconscious,
entranced, inspired, the god has lashed his Sybil on. The vital
instinct of the soul, its heaven-born, up-springing life, flings back
the silver veil, and reveals the hidden things to him who hath eyes to
see.

The storm sobs and soothes itself to silence. There is a hush, and
then an enthusiasm of delight. The small head slightly bows, the still
face scarcely smiles, the slight form disappears,--and after all, it
was only a fiddle.

"When Music, heavenly maid, was young," begins the ode; but Music,
heavenly maid, seems to me still so young, so very young, as scarcely
to have made her power felt. Her language is yet unlearned. When a
baby of a month is hungry or in p