CHAPTER VIII 



SILENCE AND MUSIC 



The art of music — Natural music — Sussex voices — A pretty girl 

 with a musical voice — Singing of the peasants — Dr. Burton on 

 Sussex singing — Primitive singing — A shepherdess and her 

 cries — The Sussex sheep-dog's temper — Silence of the hills — 

 Bird music of the downs — Common bunting — Linnet — Stone- 

 chat — "Wliinchat — The distance which sound travels — Experi- 

 ence with tramps — Singing of skylarks — Effects which cannot 

 be expressed. 



Perhaps it would be as well to explain at tlie outset 

 that about music proper I have next to nothing to say 

 in spite of the heading of this chapter. Music is inex- 

 pressibly delightful, but when I am with or very near 

 to or fresh from nature I am cold to it ; and when 

 listenmg I am in a curious way more than fastidious. 

 That which is wholly satisfying to the trained followers 

 and professors, who live and move and have their 

 beings in a perpetual concord of sweet sounds ; that 

 which they regard as perfection and the best ex- 

 pression of all that is best in man, is not a great 

 thing to me. Even when it most enchants me, if it 

 does not wholly swamp my intellect, I have a sense 

 of something abnormal in it, or at all events, of some- 

 thing whoUy out of proportion to and out of harmony 

 with things as they exist. That music comes to us 



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