442 THE VOICE OF NATURE. 



culate or musical speech, the true, the primitive lan- 

 guage of our race, has been developed with the aid of 

 instruments into a rich and varied language of sound 

 in which poems can be composed. When we listen 

 to the sublime and mournful sonatas of Beethoven, 

 when we listen to the tender melodies of Bellini, we 

 fall into a trance ; the brain burns and swells ; its 

 doors fly open ; the mind sweeps forth into an un- 

 known world where all is dim, dusky, unutterably 

 vast ; gigantic ideas pass before us ; we attempt to 

 seize them, to make them our own, but they vanish 

 like shadows in our arms. And then, as the music 

 becomes soft and low, the mind returns and nestles to 

 the heart ; the senses are steeped in languor ; the 

 eyes fill with tears ; the memories of the past take 

 form ; and a voluptuous sadness permeates the soul, 

 sweet as the sorrow of romantic youth when the real 

 bitterness of life was yet unknown. 



What, then, is the secret of this power in music ? 

 And why should certain sounds from wood and wire 

 thus touch our very heart strings to their tune ? It 

 is the voice of nature which the great composers com- 

 bine into harmony and melody ; let us follow it 

 downwards and downwards in her deep bosom, and 

 there we discover music, the speech of passion, of sen- 

 timent, of emotion, and of love ; there we discover 

 the divine language in its elements ; the sigh, the 

 gasp, the melancholy moan, the plaintive note of sup- 

 plication, the caressing murmur of maternal love, the 

 cry of challenge or of triumph, the song of the lover 

 as he serenades his mate. 



The spirit of science arises from the habit of seek- 

 ing food; the spirit of art arises from the habit of 

 imitation, by which the young animal first learns to 



