was at first determined to say nothing of this adventure; but he found on the ensuing morning, that it was already the amusement of the court and city; and he no longer made any mystery of the matter. The "mot d'enigme," however, was never discovered, nor could any motive be imagined for the mystification, beyond the caprice and idleness of its unknown perpetrator.

It is somewhat remarkable that this adventure should, in its leading feature, bear a great resemblance to one that happened to a casual acquaintance of our own, and which, without being a mystification, had all the effect of one. This gentleman, a surgeon of much practice, residing in a sea-port village in Hampshire, was, one dark winter's night, about the "celebrated hour of twelve o'clock" (to borrow a phrase from a popular novel), called from his bed to visit a patient suddenly taken ill. "Linquenda domus et placens uxor” never reads worse than in the middle of a cold frosty night; but the surgeon (like all other surgeons) comforted himself with the thought of the double honorarium "in that case provided ;" and, huddling on his clothes as fast as he could, he descended in the dark to open the street-door. On again closing it behind him, and proceeding a few paces down the street, he felt himself suddenly seized by a vigorous grasp, while the muzzle of a pistol pressed hard against his breast. His interlocutor, wrapped in an immense cloak, in no very silver tones desired him to follow, and, as he valued his life, to proceed in silence. At the turning of the street a second man started forth from a projecting doorway, and in a low anxious whisper asked, "Have you got him?" "Got him," was the laconic reply, and the three passed on without farther speaking. Farther on another confederate joined them, and "Have you got him?" was repeated in the same way, and produced the same brief half-suppressed "Got him" as before. Thus they proceeded to the outskirts of the village, where they met other men mounted, and holding led horses. "Have you got him?" cried the horsemen under less restraint, and therefore in a louder key. "Got him," more freely breathed the inflexible conductor; and placing the terrified surgeon on the saddle of one of the led steeds, he got up behind him, and the whole company scoured away over fields, heaths, and bogs, occasionally reconnoitred and joined by scrutinizing védettes, after the accustomed "Have you got him?" had assured them that they had "got him," and that all was right. The poor man's anxiety, increasing at every step that led him farther from the "haunts of man," through ways which, though he perfectly knew the country, were still new to him, was now wound up to absolute despair; when suddenly the horsemen paused, and alighted at the door of a lone cottage, in which lay a wounded man stretched on a bed. The surgeon was dismounted and ordered to examine and dress the wound, and to prescribe directions for its management: which being done, the escort took to their horses again, and, replacing the surgeon behind old "Got him," returned in the same order and with the same precautions as before. Towards break of day they arrived at the town's end, where, "Got him" having first paid the surgeon handsomely for his night's work, and threatened him with the severest vengeance if he spoke of this adventure, these "ugly customers" took their leave and departed. In this manner he was, afterwards, several times carried to visit his paVOL. VI. No. 22.-1823.

16

tient, till the convalescence of the sick man made his visits no longer necessary. It is scarcely necessary to add that the parties were smugglers, who had had an engagement with the custom-house officers; and that the secresy of their proceeding arose from the fear of the man's situation leading to detection.

It would be difficult for the malice of the most practised mystifier to have given more pain than was inflicted on our friend the surgeon by this combination of events, arising out of the "social system" of our sea-coasts; but, after all, nature and chance afford the outlines of our brightest inventions, and we are not to be surprised if they should sometimes succeed better than art in advancing them towards perfection.

66

Of all the mystifications with which man is acquainted, Voltaire thought life itself the greatest. Pourquoi," he asks, “existons-nous? pourquoi y a-t-il quelque chose?" But whatever may be thought of life, the remark is just, as applied to society, which, from first to last, is one entire humbug. Lawyers, physicians, and divines, are mystificators of the first order, and nothing can be a more thorough mauvaise plaisanterie, than the persuading men that there is honour in being shot at for sixpence per day. Virtual representation and the sinking fund every one gives up as humbugs, who has three grains of common sense. The Arts are altogether a mass of humbug, theatricals are gross humbugs, churchwardens are humbugs, county petitions are "farces" and humbugs, Whigs are humbugs, Tories are humbugs, and the Radicals themselves are humbugs also. Nay, is not love, divine love, too often a hoax? and woman, the bright oasis in the desert of life, (to make use of an original image) a tormenting mystifier? Pleasure is a mystification that leads us on from scrape to scrape, and vanishes from our sight at the moment when it seems just within our grasp. Cards and dice mystify us out of our money, wine does the same by our senses, and the tax-gatherer does both. Poetry is professedly a mystification, and friendship scarce a degree better. In short, whichever way we turn, all is one general mystification; and "nothing is but what is not." The shortest way, then, is to give in to the dupery with the best grace you can. "Carpe diem," eat, drink, read the New Monthly Magazine, and be merry. In all circumstances, whether of difficulty or of pleasure, take the thing for what it is worth; remembering that life does not come, like Christmas, once a year,' but only "once in a way;"-and if the joke be a bad one, crying will not mend it. So, with this piece of comfort, which is, after all, as mere a mystification as the rest, for this time I have done; and in plain sincerity bid the reader heartily farewell! C. M.

66

So Dunder O'Kelly set sail

From Ireland to better himself, And climb'd up the Holyhead mail To ease Johnny Bull of his pelf. To follow of glory the path

And put British beef in his belly,
At Margate, at Brighton, at Bath,
He sported Sir Dunder O'Kelly.

Sir Dunder in dancing was skill'd,
And look'd very neat in his clothes,
But indeed all his beauty was kill'd
By a terrible wen on his nose.
This double appendage, alas!

He thought neither pretty nor proper,
Nature gave him one visage of brass,
And Bacchus two noses of copper.

He dived into Bath for a bride,

The ladies all check'd his advances, And vow'd they could never abide

Loose manners, and straiten'd finances,

One lady alone met his flame,

With a hop, and a jig, and a nod,

I ask'd a blind fidler her name,

And he answer'd me-" Moll in the Wad."

His looking-glass set the poor knight
Oft times in his bed-chamber raving,

His ugliness shewing at night,

And eke in the morning when shaving. He flung himself down on the floor,Was ever unfortunate elf

So terribly haunted before

By a ghost in the shape of himself?

Resolved Charon's eddy to pass,

His pistol he primed, but-oh blunder!

He thought, if he shot at the glass,

"Twould blow out the brains of Sir Dunder.

So bang went the slugs at his head,
At once from this life to dissever;

He shot all the quicksilver dead,

But himself was as lively as ever.

Amazed at the hubbub was he,

And began, in the midst of the clatter, All over to felo de se,

But found there was nothing the matter. So, glad Charon's eddy to shun,

His sentiments thus he discloses―

"Since two heads are better than one, Perhaps 'tis the same with two noses."

To his own Tipperary poor Dun

From scenes of disturbance and bother, Trudged back, like the Prodigal Son,

And fell on the neck of his mother. At home he now follows the plough, And, whilst in his rustical courses He walks at their tails, you'll allow He never can frighten his horses.

ON MUSIC.

No. 5.-With reference to the principles of the Beautiful in that Art.

THE principles of the Beautiful in Music, so far as they apply to rhythm and Melody, have hitherto formed the exclusive object of our investigation. We now propose to direct our attention to Musical Har-. mony, and to ascertain how far that branch of the art is referable to the like principles, in what those principles consist, and how they are brought into action.

Harmony is the simultaneous exhibition of musical sounds, differing in pitch, but bearing a certain relation to each other. When such sounds are heard at the same time that a melody is proceeding, the melody is said to be accompanied by harmony.

The question whether harmony, in this sense, was known to the ancient Greeks, has long been a subject of the most animated discussions; and although these seem to have at length nearly subsided, persons are occasionally met with who, seduced by a few obscure passages in two or three Greek and Roman authors, maintain boldly that the ancients knew and practised harmony. But the arguments which may be brought forward against such an assertion are numerous and unanswerable. The reader, who wishes to form his own judgment, may consult Dr. Burney or Dr. Forkel's Histories of Music, in which, and above all in the latter, the question is fairly and amply discussed, and, we conceive, fully set at rest.

The proofs which Dr. Forkel has accumulated leave no doubt of the utter ignorance of the Greeks as to harmony. And if they were supposed to have been acquainted with it, it certainly is not to them that we are indebted for even a hint on the subject of that branch of the science. We owe them much in melody, but nothing on the score of harmony; the discovery of which, by Western Europe-by England, in all probability can progressively be traced, from documentary evidence, up to its rude origin in the 10th century.

The word "discovery," after all, is perhaps too high-sounding a term to be applied to the slight and rude traces of the beginnings of a practice, which, during the progress of many centuries, expanded itself, gradually and slowly, into an extended science, resting upon fixed rules, and the successive developement of which affords matter of interest, even in a philosophical point of view. In this respect, and in many others, as we shall hereafter have occasion to remark, harmony may be compared to the art of colouring, which emerged from the uncouth attempts of adorning a simple outline with a daub of one pigment, rudely and whimsically applied. Between such a monochrome and the Venus of Titian, the distance is as immense, as between the "Descant" of Franco and the harmony in the finale of "Il Don Giovanni." Innumerable and arduous were the intermediate steps which led both the arts to the summit of their perfection. But there was this difference in favour of colouring-and the distinction holds good between painting and music altogether-that in the long career towards that perfection, man had the prototype of imitation, Nature, constantly before. him; whereas the laws of harmony, although certainly founded in Nature, lay deeply hidden, and required long and strenuous efforts of the human intellect, to be explored and reduced into a system. Indeed

so laborious was the search, so uncertain, and irregular its march, that harmony existed as a science, and was subjected to rule, before the fundamental and simple principle upon which it rests was discovered; a principle which shed light over the whole doctrine, and totally changed its aspect.

It would be foreign to our purpose to give a regular historical sketch, however concise, of the origin and progress of the science of harmony. We shall, therefore, content ourselves with observing, that, if the simultaneous exhibition of a melody in a lower and upper octave deserved the name of singing in parts, it not only existed with the Greeks in their antiphony, but must necessarily have prevailed with any nation that sang at all. Whenever man and woman, or an adult and boy, intend singing in unison, their pitch will be found to be an octave asunder. In this there is no harmony, nor is it likely that such a circumstance would ever have led to it. Its first dawn is to be traced in the organ; an instrument which existed in a rude state, and rather as a rarity, among the Greeks and Romans at the beginning of the Christian era, was improved at Constantinople under the Greek Emperors, from thence found its way into Italy as early as the seventh or eighth century, and can be traced in a more perfect state in various cities of Western Europe in the time of Charlemagne. At that early period, already, the discovery had been made that the sound of the lower notes is rendered deeper, fuller, and stronger, by uniting with them their fifths and octaves. This triple sound, particularly the fifth, is distinctly heard in all bells of a deep note. Hence the organs in the ninth century were constructed upon that principle, which is still in force, with improvements, at the present day; and the simple sound g, for instance, was produced by the simultaneous intonation of three distinct pipes g, d, g, by means of one key*, and so the others. This contrivance upon the instrument was soon imitated by the voice, and it is asserted that St. Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who died towards the end of the tenth century, introduced such a mode of singing in parts. At all events, the practice was common in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when a strain like the following:

at which the modern ear and eye revolts, was deemed orthodox and beautiful. This was called "organizing," organizare.

The bag-pipe and hurdy-gurdy, both instruments of very ancient origin, present similar indications of rude harmony. In the latter, one string, tuned in the tonic note, constantly covibrates with the melody; and in the bag-pipe, the tonic note and its fifth keep going in like manner while the melody is proceeding.

Thirds were subsequently introduced; and another mode of singing, called discantare, consisted in singing in unison, except at the conclusion of a period, or in some intermediate places, where the second singer fell in with a few thirds, according to certain rules; and much at the

*By "key," we here, of course, mean the French touche. It is to be regretted our Musical terminology does not furnish a less ambiguous word,