" True music is the natural expression of a lofty passion 

 for a right cause. In proportion to the kingliness and 

 force of any personality, the expression either of its joy or 

 suffering becomes measured, chastened, calm, and capable 

 of interpretation only by the majesty of ordered, beautiful, 

 and worded sound. Exactly in proportion to the degree 

 in which we become narrow in the cause and conception of 

 our passions, incontinent in the utterance of them, feeble of 

 perseverance in them, sullied or shameful in the indul- 

 gence of them, their expression by musical sound becomes 

 broken, mean, fatuitous, and at last impossible ; the meas- 

 ured waves of the air of heaven will not lend themselves 

 to expression of ultimate vice: it must be forever sunk 

 into discordance or silence. And since every work of right 

 art has a tendency to reproduce the ethical state which first 

 developed it, this, which of all the arts is most directly 

 ethical in origin, is also the most direct in power of dis- 

 cipline ; the first, the simplest, the most effective of all in- 

 struments of moral instruction ; while in the failure and 

 betrayal of its functions it becomes the siibtlest aid of 

 moral degradation. Music is thus, in her health, the teacher 

 of perfect order, and is the voice of the obedience of angels, 

 and the companion of the course of the spheres of heaven." 



Queen of the Air. 



