ANIMALS. 223 



nature of these sounds, their effects upon the air, or their consonances 

 with each other. We are not now giving a history of sound, but of 

 human perception. 



"All countries are pleased with music; and if they have not skill 

 enough to produce harmony, at least they seem willing to substitute 

 noise. Without all question, noise alone is sufficient to operate pow- 

 erfully on the spirits; and, if the mind be already predisposed to joy, 

 I have seldom found noise fail of increasing it into rapture. The 

 inind feels a kind of distracted pleasure in such powerful sounds, 

 braces up every nerve, and riots in the excess. But, as in the eye, 

 an immediate gaze upon the sun will disturb the organs, so, in the ear, 

 a loud unexpected noise disorders the whole frame, and sometimes 

 disturbs the sense ever after. The mind must have time to prepare 

 for the expected shock, and to give its organs the proper tension for 

 its arrival. 



"Musical sounds, however, seem of a different kind. Those are 

 generally most pleasing which are most unexpected. It is not from 

 bracing up the nerves, but from the grateful succession of the sounds, 

 that these become so charming. There are few, how indifferent so- 

 ever, but have at times felt their pleasing impression ; and, perhaps, 

 even those who have stood out against the powerful persuasion of 

 sounds, only wanted the proper tune, or the proper instrument, to 

 allure them. 



" The ancients give us a thousand strange instances of the effects of 

 music upon men and animals. The story of Arion's harp that 

 gathered the dolphins to the ship side, is well known ; and what is 

 remarkable, Schotteus assures us,* that he saw a similar instance of 

 fishes being allured by music. They tell us of diseases that have 

 been cured, unchastity corrected, seditions quelled, passions removed, 

 and sometimes excited even to madness. Dr. Wallis has endeavoured 

 to account for these surprising effects, by ascribing them to the novelty 

 of the art. For my own part, I can scarce hesitate to impute them 

 to the exaggeration of the writers. They are as hyperbolical in the 

 effects of their oratory; and yet, we well know, there is nothing in 

 the orations which they have left us, capable of exciting madness, or 

 of raising the mind to that ungovernable degree of fury which they 

 describe. As they have exaggerated, therefore, in one instance, we 

 may naturally suppose that they have done the same in the other; 

 and, indeed, from the few remains we have of their music, collected 

 by Meibomius, one might be apt to suppose, there was nothing very 

 powerful in what is lost. Nor does any one of the ancient instru- 

 ments, such as we see them rep resented in statues, appear comparable 

 to our fiddle. 



" However this be, we fldve many odd accounts, net only among 

 them, but the moderns, of the power of music ; and it must not be 

 denied, but that, on some particular occasions, musical sounds may 

 have a very powerful effect. I have seen all the horses and cows in 

 i field, where there were above a hundred, gather round a person that 

 *as blowing the French horn, and seeming to testify an awKward 



* Quod oculis meis spectavi. Schotti Magic, universalis, pars ii. L 1 p. 26. 



