SOUND AND MUSIC 79 



irregularly, they cannot but move irregularly. Struck 

 regularly, they move with a regularity that never fails. 

 Were they a scene of disorder, harmonic motions would 

 be impossible; the sounds produced would be confused 

 and intolerable noises. But every simple sound, every 

 note of music, proclaims the order which reigns in the 

 particles by which it is conveyed. Every noise even, 

 when it is analysed, bears the same testimony. 



Periodic motions mingle harmoniously on the most mag- 

 nificent scale. Single voices, as of the lark, the nightin- 

 gale, and prima donna, are thrilling to hear. In a grand 

 orchestra, accompanied by musical instruments, multi- 

 tudinous motions mingle. They flow out in their 

 hundreds of thousands in a second. They flow out soft 

 and sweet, grand and beautiful. They mingle together. 

 They follow each other in order, every motion in the 

 place of harmony, every motion keeping rank, and 

 faithful to an alliance of wondrous obligations. Eapid 

 and multitudinous as they are, they throw not, in their 

 haste, each other into confusion, they jostle not, they 

 clash not, they produce not a hurricane of the irregular 

 and intolerable, but a storm of the ordered and trans- 

 porting. They are not as a crowd hastening wildly from 

 the terrors of a building on fire, contending, struggling, 

 trampling each other down. They are like an army 

 marching over an extended plain, every man in his 

 place, every footstep timed, their very feet having music 

 in them. Their order is as perfect as that of atoms 

 springing into combination, as those of light vibrations 

 entering the eye. They enter the ear, crowded and 

 packed though not as those of light, they enter it in 

 an order magnificent to consider. A single and simple 

 note, in which the motions follow each other at a 

 measured distance of time and space, shows the fitness 



