MUSICAL CONVERSATION. 441 



tinct occupation, to which fact may partly be ascribed 

 the superiority of modern music to that of ancient 

 times. 



The human language of speech bears the same 

 relation to the human language of song as the varied 

 bark of the civilized dog to its sonorous howl. There 

 seems little in common between the lady who sings 

 at the piano arid the dog who chimes in with jaws 

 opened and nose upraised ; yet each is making use of 

 the primitive language of its race : the wild dog can 

 only howl, the wild woman can only sing. 



Gestures with us are still used as ornaments of 

 speech, and some savage languages are yet in so im- 

 perfect a condition that gestures are requisite to eluci- 

 date the words. Gestures are relics of the primeval 

 language, and so are musical sounds. With the dog of 

 the savage there is much howl in its bark : its voice 

 is in a transitional condition. The peasants of all 

 countries sing in their talk, and savages resemble the 

 people in the opera. Their conversation is of a 

 " libretto" character : it glitters with hyperbole and 

 metaphor, and they frequently speak in recitative, 

 chanting or intoning, and ending every sentence in a 

 musically sounded O ! Often also in the midst of 

 conversation, if a man happens to become excited, he 

 will sing instead of speaking what he has to say : the 

 other also replies in song, while the company around, 

 as if touched by a musical wave, murmur a chorus in 

 perfect unison, clapping their hands, undulating their 

 bodies, and perhaps breaking forth into a dance. 



Just as the articulate or conventional speech has 

 been developed into rich and varied tongues, by 

 means of which abstract ideas and delicate emotions 

 can be expressed in appropriate terms, so the iuarti- 



