144 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



is easy to say that a song is long or short, varied 

 or monotonous, that a note is sweet, clear, mellow, 

 strong, weak, loud, shrill, sharp, and so on; but 

 from all this we get no idea of the distinctive 

 character of the sound, since these words describe 

 only class, or generic qualities, not the specific and 

 individual. It sometimes seems to help us, in 

 describing a song, to give its feeling, when it 

 strikes us as possessing some human feeling, and 

 call it joyous, glad, plaintive, tender, and so on; 

 but this is, after all, a rough expedient, and, often 

 as not, misleads. Thus, in the case of the nightin- 

 gale, I had been led by reading to expect to hear a 

 distinctly plaintive song, and found it so far from 

 plaintive that I was swayed to the opposite ex- 

 treme, and pronounced it (with Coleridge) a glad 

 song. But by-and-by I dismissed this notion as 

 equally false with the other; the more I listened 

 the more I admired the purity of sound in some 

 notes, the exquisite phrasing, the beautiful con- 

 trasts ; the art was perfect, but there was no pas- 

 sion in it all no human feeling. Feeling of some 

 un-human kind there perhaps was, but not glad- 

 ness, such as we imagine in the skylark's song, 

 and certainly not sorrow, nor anything sad. 

 Again, when we listen to a song that all have 

 agreed to call "tender," we perhaps recognize 

 some quality that faintly resembles, or affects us 

 like, the quality of tenderness in human speech or 

 vocal music ; but if we think for a moment, we are 

 convinced that it is not tenderness, that the effect 



