forced with Richter, to exclaim, "Away! away! thou speakest of things which in all my endless life I have found not, and shall not find!"

In the same way Hermes, wandering on the banks of the Nile, may have been attracted to the tortoise left ashore dead and decayed, by the wind moaning through some of its tendons dried in the sun. Touched, they yielded sounds: he afterwards made an instrument of three strings, and invented the lyre-hence called a "shell," and its strings "nerves." Herein, probably, lies the origin of all stringed instruments-unless the twanging of the bow-string be regarded as a more likely source: both may have furnished suggestions. And now we have the Æolian harp, "that simplest lute, placed lengthwise in the clasping casement," with its "soft floating witchery of sound;" or the giant harp consisting of fifteen iron wires, stretched from the top of a tower ninety feet high, to his house, one hundred and fifty paces, by the Abbate Gattoni, at Como, in the year 1785; or the similar one of Captain Haas, at Basle, which could be heard for miles around, swelling or dying, and combining in the wildest harmonies; and, even in calm, producing sounds by the electric tension (an internal and longitudinal vibration), thus indicating changes of weather by preluding the storm.

Similar effects may, to a certain extent, frequently be observed with telegraphic wires. We have often listened with delight to their wild musical murmurings in the breeze. Low sounds, otherwise quite inaudible, may at times be distinctly heard, by applying the ear to the supporting wooden poles, which are thus made to serve as conductors.

The possible longitudinal vibration of

individual particles composing the texture of the wire, as the impulse of the voltaic pile is communicated, flashing along the fiery whisper, may also have its own peculiar sound, were our ears only capable of noting it. This latter species of vibration is the same as that by which the brain itself receives or sends out its swift messages of thought and feeling-a perfect system of double nerves being organized throughout the whole human frame expressly for this purpose. But we digress.

In the discovery of Hermes, we have not only the origin of the Æolian harp, but of all harps, with successive additions to the number of their strings. In Egypt there were originally three chords-some say two, and subsequently we find as many as twenty-two. In Greece, during the Homeric age, there were four chords; between which period and the time of Terpander the number was increased to seven; an eighth was added by Pythagoras; Euclid alludes to a tenth; Timotheus, to his cost, added an eleventh; Plutarch speaks of twelve. Thus additions and improvements continued to be made, until at length we have now the modern Erard Harp, with its pedals and increased powers.

Many graceful forms of ancient harps are preserved to us by means of gems, coins, vases, bas-reliefs, mural paintings, &c.; these have been collected in two large volumes, by Doni, his valuable work being entitled “Lyra Barberina;" also in Flaxman's designs, which are more

1 Since the above was written, "M. Wertheim states that he can hear molecular vibrations running along in the longitudinal direction of an artificial magnet, so long as its substance is kept in a vexed state by frequent interruptions of the inducing electric current." Edin. Rev., No. 215, p. 53. (Article "De la Rive on Electrical Science.")

generally accessible, antique lyres, exquisitely beautiful in design, are frequently introduced.

To the same source may also be traced stringed instruments with keys, from the clavichord, virginal, spinet, and harpsichord, down to the grand piano-forte by Broadwood or Collard, with its delicate and intricate action. As an illustration of this complexity, it is stated that "In one of Messrs. Broadwood's most complete cabinet piano-fortes, the mechanism connected with the 'action' consists of about three thousand eight hundred separate pieces of ivory, ebony, cedar, sycamore, limetree, mahogany, beef-wood, oak, pine, steel, iron, brass, lead, cloth, felt, leather, and vellum. Every one of these has to be fashioned with the most scrupulous exactness, and as scrupulously adjusted to its place. Many of the pieces are not more than a quarter of an inch square, many of them even less. The qualities of all the varieties of wood are closely studied, in order to determine their particular aptitude for the different parts; and it is thus that so many as seven or eight kinds are used in the 'action' alone. One kind is preferred because slender rods made of it will not warp; another kind because the grain is straight; a third because it is hard and smooth; a fourth because it is soft and smooth, and so on. Some of the rods are as much as three feet long, and only a sixth or seventh of an inch in thickness."

Such are the facilities now afforded to Thalberg or Moschelles, to Hallé, Schumann, or Pleyel; magnificent instruments such as Handel or Haydn never beheld, but with which they would certainly have been delighted.

Also, stringed instruments played with a bow, from the rebec to the double bass; or the violins of Amati,

Steiner, or Stradivarius-in the hands of a Paganini, Sivori, Ernst, or Remenyi. As with these four species of stringed instruments, whether the chords be of gut or wire, plain or covered, so with all other kinds, enumerations of which are to be found in every work on music.

Musical glasses, sounding by friction of the finger, or by percussion; metallic springs made to vibrate, such as the Jew's harp, by the finger, or the notes of the musical box, by means of a toothed barrel; or when a current of air is directed against a thin slip of metal in an aperture, as in the harmonicon, accordion, or seraphine. In wind instruments, tubes of wood or metal, such as the flute, flageolet, horn, trumpet, &c., or those in which a reed is used, such as the clarionet or oboe, the sound is produced by the column of air inside vibrating spirally. Others are merely pulsatile, such as triangles, cymbals, drums, bells, gongs, &c.-the harsh, broken, wild and confused tone of the latter being occasioned by "the roughness and inequalities of its thickness and surface."

As the varied powers of instruments are from time to time discovered and developed, both by improvements in their construction, and additional skill acquired by performers in their management, the field for musical expression and effects is enlarged. Each instrument speaks a language of its own-its peculiar body of tone possessing a distinct quality, or as it were colour, which is by the French designated timbre.

The duration, succession, and combination of these, from the "lonely flute" to the "trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes, tabors, and cymbals," which, with "the shouting Romans," Shakspere says, made "the sun dance," joined to the ever-changing and growing re

sources of modern instrumentation, give, to music, powers of harmony of which the ancients had not the slightest conception. While listening to instrumental musicsay Mozart or Beethoven's—as Coleridge has beautifully observed in "The Friend"-"The present strain seems not only to recall, but almost to renew, some past movement, another, and yet the same! Each present movement bringing back, as it were, and embodying the spirit of some melody that had gone before, anticipates, and seems trying to overtake something that is to come; and the musician has reached the summit of his art when, having thus modified the present by the past, he at the same time weds the past in the present to some prepared and corresponsive future. The auditors' thoughts and feelings move under the same influence, retrospection blends with anticipation, and hope and memory a female Janus, becomes one power with a double aspect."

Music, furnishing the key to all order, harmony, or symmetry, might be literally called the mathematics of the feelings. Hence, those ancient fables, attributing to it miraculous powers, when rightly read, even fall short of the reality.

Chladni's experiments demonstrate the connection between sound and form;-certain vibrations causing particles of sand strewn on glass to assume certain beautiful and varied geometrical forms. Here we have

"Beauty born of murmuring sound." 1

True of atoms, the same law, under different conditions,

1 Wordsworth.