the ablest-executed pieces of this empty instrumental music. I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable: afterwards followeth the languor, and the oppression. Like that disappointing book in Patmos ; or, like the comings on of melancholy, described by Burton, doth music make her first insinuating approaches: "Most pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by some brook side, and to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect him most, amabilis insania, and mentis gratissimus error. A most incomparable delight to build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly imagine, they act, or that they see done. So delightsome these toys at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years in such contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn from themwinding and unwinding themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, until at the last the SCENE TURNS UPON A SUDDEN, and they being now habitated to such meditations and solitary places, can endure no company, can think of nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing else: continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to their minds; which now, by no means, no labour, no persuasions they can avoid, they cannot be rid of it, they cannot resist." Something like this " SCENE-TURNING I have experienced at the evening parties, at the house of my good Catholic friend Nov; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his week days into Sundays, and these latter into minor heavens.* When my friend commences upon one of those solemn anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless ear, rambling in the side aisles of the dim abbey, some five and thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion into my young apprehension (whether it be that, in which the psalmist, weary of the persecutions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings-or that other, which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what means the young man shall best I have been there, and still would go; 'Tis like a little heaven below. -Dr. Watts. cleanse his mind) -a holy calm pervadeth me.I am for the time rapt above earth, And possess joys not promised at my birth. But when this master of the spell, not content to have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, -impatient to overcome her "earthly" with his "heavenly," still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, above which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant tritons, Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps, I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at my wit's end; - clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me- priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me the genius of his religion hath me in her toils-a shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous is Pope, and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too, tri-coroneted like himself! I am converted, and yet a Protestant;-at once malleus hereticorum, and myself grand heresiarch or three heresies centre in my person : -I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus - Gog and Magog-what not?-till the coming in of the friendly - he supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer faith; and restores to me the genuine unterrifying aspects of my pleasant-countenanced host and hostess. ALL FOOLS' DAY. THE Compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first of April to us all! - Many happy returns of this day to you-and you - and you, Sir nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon the matter. Do not we know one another? what need of ceremony among friends? we have all a touch of that same you understand me a speck of the motley. Beshrew the man who on such a day as this, the general festival, should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it. He that meets me in the forest to-day, shall meet with no wise-acre, I can tell him. Stultus sum. Translate me that, and take the meaning of it to yourself for your pains. What, man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at the least computation. Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry-we will drink no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day and let us troll the catch of Amiens duc ad |