AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 31 



" ^nd he that hath no music in his soul f^ we all know what lie 

 is fit for. 



In a violent storm at sea, the passenger listens, shut up below, 

 to the horrors of the gale for hours. At length they become less 

 and less, and then what a balmy feeling enfolds his heart as the 

 rude sailor on deck sings, " Cease rude Eoreas, blustering railer !" 

 The music lulls him to exquisite sleep. We say, give us music 

 in the midst of our labors, at sea or on shore; give us the best 

 too ! Let every house have it. 



We feel glad whenever we see an organ or a pianoforte, espe- 

 cially the modern, noble improved pianos. We look at every 

 one as a missionary of civilization and good. An intelligent 

 writer, you may know him, I have forgot, said in my day, " Let 

 me make the music for a nation and I have them." What enor- 

 mous power followed the great French hymn, the Marseillaise ; 

 still sounding in our ears from hand-organs in the street; sung by 

 myriads in and out of France since 1794, when I first heard it 

 sung by the officers and men of a French corvette in this harbor, 

 sung only as madmen alone can sing. 



Dibdin, the sea poet, has done as much for the navy of 

 old " jE^/? o-/and," as some of her heroes. Nelson perhaps ex- 

 cepted. 



A cynical philosopher who had travelled much among rude 

 nations (you recollect) said that he felt gratified at having arrived 

 at last in a civilized country, for he had found a gallows stand- 

 ing near the town ! How infinitely superior evidence of that 

 would have been one of our charming pianos at the first house he 

 entered 1 



What an immense stride has been caused by the electric fluid, in 

 civilization 1 Franklin received the first flash of it since creation. 

 He drew it down from heaven, and the American Morse set it to, 

 work. All nations are looking with almost breathless anxiety to 

 hear in a second from each other by wire two miles deep and al- 

 most three thousand miles long by the ocean road 



