210 BIRMINGHAM MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 



on JMusic. That it is a duty to cultivate every faculty, that each is 

 in its own nature good, only becoming hurtful when allowed undu- 

 ly to preponderate, that the exercise of each is a source of pleasure, 

 are axioms of phrenologists which few, we hope, will controvert. 

 Although, however, all the faculties are good, and, if used aright, 

 productive of happiness, they nevertheless differ widely in the rank 

 which they hold in the mental scale. By the wise and benevolent 

 arrangement of the Creator, the exercise of the higher faculties 

 affords a greater degree of pleasure than that of the lower. Hence 

 the pursuit, art, or science which employs the greatest number of 

 the highest faculties is calculated to impart the greatest portion of 

 happiness. Let us apply this test to JMusic. The two primitive 

 faculties essential to the cultivation of this art are Time and Tune, 

 the latter giving the perception of the relations of sound with regard 

 to pitch, the former with regard to duration and rhythm. These we 

 maintain to be common to the whole human race, and the assertion 

 is strongly corroborated by the existence of a taste for music of some 

 kind among the most savage, as well as among the most civilized, 

 nations. Now, as God has endowed all men with the faculties 

 which render music pleasing, and as he has, moreover, presented 

 them with the most perfect mechanical means of gratifying those 

 faculties — namely, the human voice — it seems self-evident that this 

 beautiful adaptation between the desire and the power of satisfying 

 it was intended to lead to a certain result, and that result was the 

 art of Alusic. It seems equally evident, that he who cultivates 

 these faculties fulfils a part of the intentions of his Creator, while 

 he who neglects them is like the slothful servant who buried his 

 talent under ground. 



It may, perhaps, be objected by those who have no faith in Phre- 

 nology, that music is an artificial and factitious taste — a morbid and 

 unnatural excitement — an art of man's devising only. For the be- 

 nefit of such cavillers, laying aside for awhile phrenological lan- 

 guage, let us state a few elementary facts, whicli satisfactorily 

 prove that however music may have been improved by the art of 

 man, it has its origin in Nature ; and which, by shewing that Mu- 

 sic, equally with Painting, Sculpture, and Poetry, is derived from 

 the immutable laws of Nature, and the constitution of the human 

 mind, place it on the same basis as one of the fine arts. Sound is 

 the effect of the vibrations of matter upon the atmosphere. When 

 these vibrations succeed each other at regular intervals a tone or 

 musical sound is the result ; when at irregular intervals, a noise. 



