es that
flourished long ago, and whose very dust is still eloquent with the
story of departed greatness. The spirit of genius lingers there still
like the fragrance of roses faded and gone.

I thought I heard the harp of Pindar, and the impassioned song of the
dark-eyed Sappho. I thought I heard the lofty epic of the blind Homer,
rushing on in the red tide of battle, and the divine Plato discoursing
like an oracle in his academic shades.

The canvas spoke and the marble breathed when Apelles painted and
Phidias carved.

I stood with Michael Angelo and saw him chisel his dreams from the
marble.

I saw Raphael spread his visions of beauty in immortal colors.

I sat under the spirit of Paganini's power. The flow of his melody
turned the very air into music. I thought I was in the presence of
Divinity as I listened to the warbles, and murmurs, and the ebb and flow
of the silver tides, from his violin. And I said: Music is the dearest
gift of God to man. The sea, the forest, the field, and the meadow, are
the very fountain heads of music.

I believe that Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Schubert, and Verdi, and all
the great masters, caught their sweetest dreams from nature's musicians.
I think their richest airs of mirth, and gladness, and joy, were stolen
from the purling rivulet and the rippling river. I believe their
grandest inspirations were born of the tempest, and the thunder, and the
rolling billows of the angry ocean.

NATURE'S MUSICIANS.

[Illustration]

I sat on the grassy brink of a mountain stream in the gathering twilight
of evening. The shadowy woodlands around me became a great theatre. The
greensward before me was its stage.

The tinkling bell of a passing herd rang up the curtain, and I sat there
all alone in the hush of the dying day and listened to a concert of
nature's musicians who sing as God hath taught them to sing. The first
singer that entered my stage was Signor Grasshopper. He mounted a
mullein leaf and sang, and sang, and sang, until Professor Turkey
Gobbler slipped up behind him with open mouth, and Signor Grasshopper
vanished from the footlights forevermore. And as Professor Turkey
Gobbler strutted off my stage with a merry gobble, the orchestra opened
before me with a flourish of trumpets. The katydid led off with a
trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E. flat cornet; the
bumblebee played on his violoncello, and the jay-bird, laughed with his
piccolo. The music ros