of these
channels and the filling up of the ocean by constantly increasing
accumulations, as well as by upheavals, will be the object of the next
article.
* * * * *
THE MUSICIAN.
He did not move the hills and the rocks with his music, because those days
are passed away,--the days when Orpheus had all Nature for his audience,
when the audience would not keep its seat. In those days trees and rocks
may have held less firm root in the soil: it was nearer the old
Chaos-times, and they had not lost the habit of the whirling dance. The
trees had not found their "continental" home, and the rocks were not yet
wedded to their places: so they could each enjoy one more bachelor-dance
before settling into their staid vegetable and mineral domestic happiness.
Our musician had no power, then, to move them from their place of ages: he
did not stir them as much as the morning and evening breezes among the
leaves, or the streams trickling down among the great rocks and wearing
their way over precipices. But he moved men and women, of all natures and
feelings. He could translate Bach and Beethoven, Mendelssohn and
Mozart,--all the great poet-musicians that are silent now, and must be
listened to through an interpreter. All the great people and all the
little people came to hear him. A princess fell in love with him. She
would have married him. She did everything but ask him to marry her.
Indeed, some of his friends declared she did this; but that cannot be
believed.
"You ought to be satisfied," said one of his friends to the musician, one
day; "all the world admires you; money drops from the keys of your
piano-forte; and a princess is in love with you."
"With me?" answered the musician; "with my music, perhaps. You talk
nonsense, when you talk of her falling in love with me, of her marrying a
poor musician. What then? To have one instrument more in her palace! Let
her marry her piano-forte,--or her violin, if she objects to a quadruped!"
"You are as blind as Homer," said his friend. "Can't you see that her love
is purely personal? Would she care to give a title to a pianist, if he
were any other than Arnold Wulff? If you had other eyes in your head, or
if there were another man inside even that same face of yours, the strains
might flow out under your fingers like streams from Paradise, in vain, so
far as her heart was concerned. Your voice is quite as persuasive as your
music, with
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