2 Life, Genius, and Personal Habits of Bewick-. 
breakfast the conversation was hurried and hearty. As my 
friend, the banker, could remain but one day, he left me be- 
hind, where I fondly lingered till 18th of August. 
“ Another day, another day, 
And yet another pass’d away.” 
When the tide and effusion of heart at meeting had some~ 
what subsided, we settled down into calmer delight. They 
showed me almost exhaustless drawers of blocks he had cut for 
his past and his future writings ; and as he sat at work, I en- 
joyed his more deliberate and sound conversation, accompanied 
by strains of his most extraordinary powers of whistling. His 
ear (as a musical feeling is called) was so delicately acute, and 
his inflexorial powers so nice and rapid, that he could run, in 
any direction or modulation, the diatonic or chromatic scale, 
and even split the quarter notes of the enharmonic ; neither of 
which, however, did he understand scientifically, though so 
consummately elegant his execution : and his musical memory 
was so tenacious, that he could whistle through the melodies 
of whole overtures; and these, he said, he could obtain having 
once heard from the orchestra of a playhouse, or a holiday 
band, in both of which he took extreme delight. In proof of 
this I tried him to some extent, by flinging on his piano-forte 
several wild airs I had taken down from pipers in the Hebrides 
and Highlands, of difficult and intricate evolution, which he 
completely repeated the first time. Lest he might have heard 
these before, I farther sprinkled at him (without information 
of their originality), several private imitations, I had myself 
composed, of various national melodies, which he not onl 
instantly and spiritedly whistled, but remembered long after ; 
as I found when sauntering with him amid the mountains of 
Derbyshire. I have always thought music one of the greatest 
and surest tests of talent; and this, with numberless instances, 
corroborates my confirmation. I, moreover, confidently be- 
lieve, that the universally quoted and remarkably bold passage 
of that wholly delicious scene in The Merchant of Venice, has 
intensely much more illustration of moral and physical truth, 
than millions are capable of imagining, or willing to admit. 
The aroma of music has nothing to do with the ear; it exists 
in every atom of the nervous temperament, connected inti- 
mately with exquisitely fine understanding: all can hear it, 
though having no more music in themselves than has a post, 
most likely nothing near so much, though all vow they love it 
prodigiously. But I am not scribbling a tractate on music: 
indulge me, gentle reader; I know thou wilt, if musical: if 
