THE DEATH OF BRYANT. How was it then with Nature when the soul His antique shade, beaconed upon its way Her voice it was, her sovereign voice, which bade The Earth resolve his elemental mold; And once more came her summons: "Long, too long, Fell from the bent bow of the answering Sun, Who cried, "The song is closed, the invocation done!" But not as for those youths dead ere their prime, Of Lycidas; no strains which skyward swell The Muses wept not for him as for those Of whom each vanished like a beauteous star Quenched ere the shining midwatch of the night; The greenwood Nymphs mourned not his lost delight; Nor Echo, hidden in the tangled close, Grieved that she could not mimic him afar. He ceased not from our sight Like him who, in the first glad flight of spring, Fell as an eagle pierced with shafts from his own wing. This was not Thyrsis! no, the minstrel lone The sacred groves that with my presence yearn." All fair things vestured by the changing year, Which now awoke in joy to welcome one most dear. "He comes!" declared the unseen ones that haunt The dark recesses, the infinitude Of whispering old oaks and soughing pines. "He comes!" the warders of the forest shrines Sang joyously. "His spirit ministrant Henceforth with us shall walk the underwood, Its music added to our choral hymn, Rising and falling far through archways deep and dim!" The orchard fields, the hill-side pastures green, Put gladness on; the rippling harvest-wave Ran like a smile, as if a moment there He came, and trembled, far as to the sea It moves from rock-ribbed heights where its dark fountains be. His presence brooded on the rolling plain, In that mist-molded shape their kinsman knew, So drew he to the living veil, which hung Of old above the deep's unimaged face, And sought his own. Henceforward he is free Which men have given a sepulchre among The pathways of their kind, a resting-place Knelt the proud mother of a mighty land Came one by one the Seasons, meetly drest, To sentinel the relics of their seer. First Spring upon whose head a wreath was set June, and her sisters, whose brown hands entwine Next, Autumn, like a monarch sad of heart, Purple he wore, and bore a golden rod, A lone fringed-gentian ere he would depart. Winter, with beard and raiment blown before, What forms are these amid the pageant fair, Harping with hands that falter? What sad throng? The woods and waves that knew him, but can learn Naught save the hollow, haunting cry, "Return! return!" Edmund C. Stedman. THE NATURE OF MUSIC. AMONG the mistaken notions that have long prevailed in regard to music is the one that a taste for it may be planted and cultivated in almost any young person, and that some skill in musical execution may be attained by almost any one who will begin early enough and practice long enough. I say almost, because there are some young people of either sex who, joining to their natural incapacity of music a certain stolidity, a certain stubbornness, or shall we say a certain combination of self-knowledge 1 As to the unreason and utter lack of meaning in the phrase "the exception which proves the and self-respect, prove so thoroughly impracticable in this respect that it has to be confessed that they have absolutely no talent for music. Such as these, however, are regarded by the holders of the notion aforesaid as the very rare exceptions, -exceptions which, they say, with admirable logic quite worthy of the notion it is intended to support, prove the rule. It is gravely proposed by these people that music should be made a part of the routine of early education in all schools, and that all, or practi rule," as commonly used, see Words and their Uses, Appendix. cally all, children and adolescent persons should be taught to sing or to play at sight. It is admitted that they will attain to various degrees of proficiency in skill of music; but it is assumed that all or nearly all of them will acquire some executive ability, enough to take part in concerted music; at least enough to have made the training a valuable part of education. It would be as reasonable to expect all the girls to have black eyes, and all the boys to grow to be six feet high. The great number of people who are wholly without musical perceptions, and who are born without even the germs of musical development, seems to be little suspected; as little as, until a few years ago, it was known that a very considerable proportion of the men and women around us had not only no eye for color, but could not distinguish the real difference between the very primary colors themselves. Still less does it seem to have been suspected that of those who have the musical faculty in a certain rather low degree, that is, the apprehension of rhythm and pitch, or time and tune, and the ability of receiving a certain kind of pleasure from certain forms of melody, there are many in whom all the experience and all the cultivation to which they could be subjected would not develop the capacity to appreciate the higher music. It would seem that the fact that men and women are born with or without the musical faculty, or with it only in a certain degree, should be one of universal and undisputed acceptance, -one that should be assumed and acted upon in all inquiries or experiments in regard to the condition of the intellect or the phenomena of emotion. But it is not so. It has been a matter of general belief for a long period that music exercised a more or less soothing influence over the mentally insane. "Music cures madness" is another one of those silly sayings that are generally received and repeated and believed, partly because of their embodying what seems to be a general truth in a terse form, partly because of their alliteration, and partly because no one knows any reason why they should be true. Not long since, some of the patients in one of our public insane asylums were subjected to the influences of music by way of testing its effect upon persons in their condition. Upon most of them it seemed to have no effect at all, whether their insanity was melancholia or mania in any of its forms. Of those affected with mania, some were brought in with the paroxysm on, others in intervals of quiet; but all were alike unmoved by the music. They took little or no notice of it, and remained in their stolid or their raving state, as the case might be; and this equally whether the music was lively and spirited, or sad and tender. This result was merely what might, or rather what should, have been expected. Indeed, the experiment decided nothing, and could have decided nothing; for as to the adage about music and madness, that is too absurd for the demonstration of its fallacy to be taken into consideration. The experiment could have decided nothing, because nothing was known of the conditions under which it was made. To test the effect of music upon the insane, the subjects of the experiment must be persons known to have been susceptible of musical impressions in a state of mental health. If these persons had been stone deaf from birth, the most visionary believer in the powers of music to "soothe the savage breast" would not have thought of experimenting upon their insanity by the performance of music in their presence. Need it be said that it would be as reasonable to subject the born deaf to the influence of music, with the expectation of consequent psychological phenomena, as to do the same with those who are born without the perception of melody and harmony? No case is insupposable; and it is supposable that insanity might develop musical susceptibility in a person who in a normal state was entirely without musical perceptions. But as this involves the absurdity of assuming that a defect of organization is remedied and supplied by disease, it may be dismissed without further consideration. Disease sometimes increases nat ural sensibility, even to a painful degree; insanity sometimes appears to bestow knowledge, always, however, by merely uniting a broken chain of memory; but there is, I believe, no case on record, nor is it consistent with reason that there should be a case, in which disease, which is disorganizing, enfeebling, and destructive, bestowed faculties not before possessed. Therefore, as I remarked before, the only way to test the effect of music upon the insane is to choose subjects known to have been musically sensitive in their sane condition. Whether this has been done, I do not know; but I will venture the prediction that when it is done the result of the experiment will be that music will be found to have just the same effect upon these persons, other things being equal, in their insane condition that it had upon them before the period of their intellectual disturbance. By other things being equal, I refer to their emotional condition. Lovers of music, however sensitive or however sane, are more easily moved by it at some times than at others, and in certain moods than in others; and if the insane subject of a musical experiment is by nature musically sensitive, and at the time of the experiment is in a condition of unusual emotional excitability, that excitability will cause an unusually quick and strong response to the influence of music, as it will to that of any other stimulus or irritant. The point is that intellectual derangement in a musically organized person will not blunt musical sensitiveness, or disturb musical perceptions. How common musical incapacity is, how great its varieties are, and how frequently persons of rare intellectual and moral qualities are afflicted with this defect of organization, and suffer the loss of this incomparable pleasure, I believe to be not generally known with a knowledge which leads to any intelligent apprehension. It is admitted in regard to certain persons that they know nothing about music. Of these a conspicuous example is Dr. Johnson, of whom Macaulay says that he just knew the bell of St. Paul's from the organ; and like stories are told of a few other celebrated people. But these persons are regarded in literature (which is generally made by music-lovers, or by those who, like Bulwer and Helps, affect to be so) as intellectual monsters, lusus naturæ, as much so as the Duke of Marlborough in his inability to tell red from green. As to this, by the way, the question naturally arises, When the beautiful Duchess of Cleveland blushed with love, when Sarah Jennings, less beautiful but more alluring, flamed with anger, did their cheeks turn deep green in the eyes of their admirer? — that is, the tint that to him was deep green? If so, what was the beauty that captivated him? If not, were the trees and the turf red, or the tint that to him was red? In either case, what a strange aspect would the world present to us of its color-seeing inhabitants if we were obliged to look through such eyes for a while at the face of man and of woman, and that of nature! From some difference of this kind I am sure the musically sensitive would suffer if they were compelled to listen with the ears of those who are music-deaf. Life would lose to them one of its greatest charms; and not only so, but it would seem that there was a "great gap in nature," that a part of the cosmos had suddenly been extinguished. And so indeed for them it would truly be; for as far as the individual, at least, is concerned, phenomena exist only subjectively, from our consciousness of their nature. The numbers of the wholly music-deaf are, I believe, generally very much underrated. Literature, at least that important part of it known as belles-lettres, having been made by music-lovers, and poetry the poet having at first been a singer as well as a maker of verses-being filled with lauds of music and extollings of music lovers, and condemnation, implicit if not explicit, of those who have no music in their souls, a confession of a lack of interest in this art is one that demands no inconsiderable candor and courage. A man may own to an incapacity to appreciate pictures, or statues, or the beauty of architecture, as |