SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 63 
It is contended by those who ascribe to Egypt the 
distinguished honour of having first arranged a series 
of sounds in harmonic order, that they received the 
intimation from the stridulous murmur of winds 
whistling through reeds or other vegetable tubes on 
the banks of the Nile. But it seems absurd., and is 
in fact opposed to every suggestion of probability — nay, 
it appears incompatible with sound philosophical in- 
ference to suppose, that where nature had rendered the 
human voice capable of such variety of modulations, 
which were constantly obvious to the ear, a people, 
however rude, should have recourse for the sugges- 
tions of musical concordance, and the combination of 
harmonious sounds into scientific order, to the clatter 
made by the wind passing between reeds or similar 
productions of the soil. There were surely other 
harmonies in nature much more likely to have in- 
dicated the rudiments of an art cultivated with more 
or less success in every nation under heaven. The 
birds, those artless choristers of the woods and fields, 
may very reasonably be supposed to have suggested 
nature as at once the most exquisite and transport- 
ing prototype of art ; and man was thus led to imi- 
tate, of course at first rudely and imperfectly, what 
Divine wisdom had pronounced to be very good. The 
Deity has stamped everything with the signet of 
consummate harmony. The very roar of the tiger 
becomes the solemn stillness of the forest, as much 
as the plaintive notes of the nightingale the silence 
of the glen, or those of the thrush and blackbird 
that of the secluded copse. 
We find that even among the most savage tribes 
