244 



Prehistoric Music. 



astonishment of all present, he drew from it a marvelously pure and 

 sweet musical sound. 



When Rossini went, the same year of his death, to see M. Baudre, 

 he admired especially one of the stones which has a form of a thigh — 

 he told him he thought it must be the bone of an old musician. 



Some French poet has written the following lines : 



" Ah, qu'on ne dise plus : Aussi froid que la pierre — 

 Les pierres out une ame et cette ame une voix 

 Vivante, liarmonieuse et pleine de mystere. 

 Honneur ii I'Enclianteur qui leur a fait des lois." 



Victor Hugo also wrote him : Patience is not enough ; it needs the 

 original and fruitful idea ; it needs faith, without which nothing 

 grand can be undertaken. All this you have had, and you have 

 achieved the impossible, the incredible, you make the stones sing. 

 Virgil, that other enchanter, had only known how to make them 

 weep. You are the poet predicted by the Roman orator who said, 

 'Rocks and deserts answer to your Yoice.^ This truly prehistoric 

 harpsichord, these more than ancient keys, astonished without doubt 

 at repeating our most modern airs, haye recalled to me the aerial, I 

 might almost say celestial chime from the lofty bell tower of the 

 Cathedral at Antwerp. There is then in the words of Chateaubriand, 



A voice in the stone, and the hard flint, from which flame darts, is 

 also the source of harmony."' 



" Stirred by Ampliion's Lrre, stones from tlie glebes 



Skipped to their places on the walls of Thebes. 



You to our ears a greater wonder bring, 



Beneath your touch the flints divinely sing 



The lovely music charms both ear and heart. 



And we exclaim as wondering we depart ; 



Sure to these rustic notes, in Eden's glade, 



Eve must have danced while father Adam played." 



