pastoral picture of a shepherd playing upon his pipe;
trumpets and drums suggest war, and so on. The delineation of
movement is easier to the musician than it is to the poet. Handel, who
has conveyed the sensation of a "darkness which might be felt," in a
chorus of his "Israel in Egypt," by means which appeal solely to the
imagination stirred by feelings, has in the same work pictured the
plague of frogs with a frank _naivete_ which almost upsets our
seriousness of demeanor, by suggesting the characteristic movement of
the creatures in the instrumental accompaniment to the arioso, "Their
land brought forth frogs," which begins thus:

[Sidenote: _Handel's frogs._]

[Music illustration]

[Sidenote: _The movement of water._]

We find the gentle flux and reflux of water as if it were lapping a
rocky shore in the exquisite figure out of which Mendelssohn
constructed his "Hebrides" overture:

[Music illustration]

and in fancy we ride on mighty surges when we listen to the principal
subject of Rubinstein's "Ocean" symphony:

[Music illustration]

In none of these instances can the composer be said to be imitative.
Music cannot copy water, but it can do what water does, and so suggest
water.

[Sidenote: _High and low._]

Some of the most common devices of composers are based on conceptions
that are wholly arbitrary. A musical tone cannot have position in
space such as is indicated by high or low, yet so familiar is the
association of acuteness of pitch with height, and gravity of pitch
with depth, that composers continually delineate high things with
acute tones and low things with grave tones, as witness Handel in one
of the choruses of "The Messiah:"

[Music illustration: Glo-ry to God in the high-est, and peace on
earth.]

[Sidenote: _Ascent, descent, and distance delineated._]

Similarly, too, does Beethoven describe the ascent into heaven and the
descent into hell in the Credo of his mass in D. Beethoven's music,
indeed, is full of tone-painting, and because it exemplifies a double
device I make room for one more illustration. It is from the cantata
"Becalmed at Sea, and a Prosperous Voyage," and in it the composer
pictures the immensity of the sea by a sudden, extraordinary spreading
out of his harmonies, which is musical, and dwelling a long time on
the word "distance" (_Weite_) which is rhetorical:

[Music illustration: In der un-ge-heu-'ren Wei-te.]

[Sidenote: _Bald imitation bad art._]

[Siden