June — His Wonderful Voice. 199 



song was too original and too beautiful to be mixed 

 with the vulgar noises of the day, and even the glare 

 of sunshine would have been too violent an accom- 

 paniment ; but when the woods lie dark in the broad 

 shadows that are cast by the midnight moon, and only 

 a leaf glitters here and there as it trembles in the soft, 

 noiseless breezes of the summer night, then, on some 

 thin high branch, the nightingale sits and sings alone. 

 And what wonderful singing it is ! Many a human 

 reputation has been overdone, but this reputation of the 

 nightingale, great as it has been in all countries that 

 are favored by his performances, and even in other coun- 

 tries, too, by hearsay, has never yet fully prepared any 

 sensitive person to hear him for the first time with- 

 out both delight and amazement. The wonder ever 

 remains that a creature so small and weak, so little 

 gifted with the graces of outward appearance, a little, 

 thin, gray bird that only weighs half-an-ounce — the 

 weight of a letter — should possess a voice as strong as 

 the voice of a prima donna at the Opera, and at the 

 same time so marvellously sweet and pure. But not 

 alone for its strength and its purity is the song of the 

 nightingale astonishing. Its variety and flexibility are 

 more astonishing still. No musician ever better under- 

 stood the value of piano and pianissimo, of forte and 

 fortissimo, no musician ever developed a crescendo with 

 more sure and delicate gradation. And then the clear, 

 shrill pipings, the long brilliant shakes, the sudden sharp 

 strokes of sound like the crash of a violinist's bow upon 

 the strings, the tender passionate cadences fading away 



