ship we are forgetting the higher and more spiritual one ear listens, and that it is addressed without a witaltars. ness to one who cannot stand aside from herself and separate the enchanter from his music. It is an insidious and beguiling power; and I have seen men who, without any pretensions to dignity or imposing address, would arrest attention the moment their voices were heard, and who, if they leaned over to murmur in a woman's ear, were certain of pleasing, though the remark were the very idlest common-place of conversation.

I do

A sweet voice is indispensable to a woman. not think I can describe it. It can be, and sometimes is, cultivated. It is not inconsistent with great vivacity, but it is oftener the gift of the quiet and unobtrusive. Loudness or rapidity of utterance is incompati ble with it. It is low, but not guttural; deliberate, but not slow. Every syllable is distinctly heard, but they follow each other like drops of water from a foun

Hitherto I have spoken only of the sounds of irrational and inanimate nature. A better than these, and the best music under heaven, is the music of the human voice. I doubt whether all voices are not capable of it, though there must be degrees in its beauty. The tones of affection in all children are sweet, and we know not how much their unpleasantness in after life may be the effect of sin, and coarseness, and the consequent habitual expression of discordant passions. But we do know that the voice of any human being becomes touching by distress, and that even on the coarse-minded and the low, religion and the higher passions of the world have sometimes so wrought, that their eloquence was like the strong passages of an organ. I have been much about the world, and with a boy's unrest and tain. It is like the cooing of the dove-not shrill, nor a peculiar thirst for novel sensations, have mingled for a time in every walk of life; yet never have I even clear, but uttered with the subdued and touching readiness which every voice assumes in moments of known man or woman, under any strong feeling that was not utterly degraded, whose voice did not deep feeling or tenderness. It is a glorious gift in woman. I should be won by it more than by beautydeepen to a chord of grandeur, or soften to cadences to which a harp might have been swept plea-rate them. But I never heard a deep, sweet voice from more even than by talent, were it possible to sepasantly. It is a perfect instrument as it comes from a weak woman. the hand of its Maker, and, though its strings may relax with the atmosphere, or be injured by misuse and neglect, it is always capable of being re-strung to its compass, until its frame is shattered.

Men have seldom musical voices. Whether it is that their passions are coarser, or that their life of caution and reserve shuts up the kindliness from which it would spring, a pleasant masculine voice is one of the rarest gifts of our sex. Whenever you do meet it, however, it is always accompanied either by noble qualities, or by that peculiar capacity for under. standing all characters, which Goethe calls a "presentiment of the universe," and which enables its possessor, without a spark of a generous nature himself, to know perfectly what it is in others, and to deceive the world by assuming all its accompany ments and all its outwardy evidence. I speak now, and throughout these remarks, only of the conversa tional tone. A man may sing never so well, and still speak execrably; and I rarely have known a person who conversed musically, to sing even a tolerable song.

A good tone is generally the gift of a gentleman, for it is always low and deep; and the vulgar never possess the serenity and composure from which it alone can spring; they are always busy and hurried, and a high, sharp tone becomes habitual.

There is nothing like a sweet voice to win upon the confidence. It is the secret of the otherwise unaccountable success of some men in society. They never talk for more than one to hear, and to that one, if a woman, and attractive, it is a most dangerous, because unsuspected spell; and every one knows how the voice softens instinctively with the knowledge that but

of thoughts which have lain in the bosom till their saIt is the organ of strong feeling, and credness almost hushes utterance. I remember listening in the midst of a crowd, inany years ago, to the voice of a girl-a mere child of sixteen summers-till I was bewildered. She was a pure, high-hearted, im• passioned creature, without the least knowledge of the world, or her peculiar gift; but her own thoughts had wrought upon her like the hush of a sanctuary, and she spoke low as if with an unconscious awe. I could never trifle in her presence. My nonsense seemed out of place, and my practical assurance forsook me utterly. She is changed now. She has been admired, and found out her beauty, and the music of her tone is gone. She will recover it by and by, when the delirium of the world is over, and she begins to rely upon her own thoughts for company; but her extravagant spirits have broken over the thrilling timidity of childhood, and the charm is unwound.

There was a lady whom I used to meet when a boy, as I loitered to school with my satchel in the summer mornings, and of whom, by and by, I came to dream, night and day, with a boy's impassioned and indefinite longing. She was a married women, perhaps twenty years older than I, but very-very beautiful. She was like one's idea of a Countess-large, but perfectly light and graceful, with an eye of inexpressible softness and languor. I was certain she had a low, delicious tone, and as she passed me in the street, I used to fancy how the words must linger and melt on that red lip, with its deep-colored and voluptuous fulness. Years after, when I had become a man, I was introduced to her. I made some passing remark, and with my boyish impression still floating in my mind, waited almost breathlessly for her answer. When she did speak

I was perfectly electrified. Such a wonderful rapidity of utterance, such a volume of language, I never heard from the lips of a woman. My dream was over.

ations far more calculated to excite terror, but nothing ever overcome me like that solitary vigil. I had been up night after night with my friend, and was certainly much unnerved by fatigue and exhaustion; but the circumstance furnishes matter of speculation to the inquirer after the phenomena of human nature.

The music of church bells has become a matter of poetry. Thomas Moore, whose mere sense of beauty is making him religious, and who knows better than any other man what is beautiful—has sung 66 those even

It was always a wonder to me, that the voice is so neglected in a fashionable education. There is a power in it over men, greater even than manner, for it is never suspected. Nothing repels like indifference, and indifference is a loud talker, to whom any body may listen, and whom, therefore, nobody cares to hear. But a low tone is redolent of the great secret of a woman's power-reliance! Nothing wins like reliance. Be it in manner or tone, it is alike irresistible. I have seening bells" in some of the most melodious of his elaboa woman who would captivate most men by simply rate stanzas. I remember, though somewhat imperleaning on their arm. It was the only thing she knew, fectly, a touching story connected with the church bells and she did that beautifully. It said more plainly than in a town of Italy, which had become famed all over she could have spoken it, "I confide in you utterly;" | Europe for their peculiar solemnity and sweetness. and who, that had not been initiated, could resist such They were made by a young Italian artizan, and were an appeal? There is something in words spoke soft- his heart's pride. During the war, the place was sackly, and meant for one's ear alone, which touches the ed and the bells carried off, no one knew whither. Af heart like enchantment. I never linger by a low- ter the tumult was over, the poor fellow returned to voiced woman if she is not young. It indicates either his work; but it had been the solace of his life to wan a childlike innocence and truth, or it is the practised der about at evening and listen to the chime of his witchery of a woman of the world, who knows too bells, and he grew dispirited and sick, and pined for well for me the secret of her power. them till he could no longer bear it, and left his home, determined to wander over the world and hear them once again before he died. He went from land to land, stopping in every village, till the hope that alone sustained him began to falter, and he knew at last that he was dying. He lay one evening in a boat that was slowly floating down the Rhine, almost insensible, and scarce expecting to see the sun rise again, that was now setting gloriously over the vine-covered hills of Germany. Presently, the vesper bells of a distant village began to ring, and as the chimes stole faintly over the river with the evening breeze, he started from his lethargy. He was not mistaken; it was the deep, solemn, heavenly music of his own bells; and the sounds that he had thirsted for years to hear, were

his ear close to the calm surface of the river, and listened. They rang out their hymn and ceased-and he still lay motionless in his painful posture. His companions spoke to him, but he gave no answer-his spirit had followed the last sound of the vesper chime.

There are circumstances in which the simplest sound becomes awful. I once watched with a dying friend in a solitary farm-house. It was a clear still night in December, and there was not a sound to be heard beyond his just audible breathing. It wanted but a quarter to one, and I began to anticipate the striking of the large clock which stood in the farthest corner of the room in which I sat. It was, at first, simply with reference to my friend's comfort, for he was in a gentle doze, and I feared it might wake him from the only sleep he had got that night. I sat looking at the clock. The minute hand crept slowly on. I began to feel an nervous interest in its progress, and, as it advanced visibly, I leaned over and grasped more firmly the arm of the huge chair. As it grew near, a strange fear be-melting over the water. He leaned from the boat, with gan to curdle my blood, and I could feel my hair stir, as if each individual filament were withering at the root. It crept on and on. There was but one minute left! I felt a smothering sensation at my heart, and it seemed to me as if my life must stop. But that one minute seemed to me an hour. Before it had expired, every event of my life had rushed through my memory, and the awful responsibility of time, and the aggregate of pain, and despair, and agony, that was felt by the hundreds that were dying at that moment, and the guilt that was festering in the darkness the hearts of those who may not sleep, and, over all, my own thoughtless and immeasurable prodigality of time, and health, and opportunity, crowded into my soul, as if its capacity were equal to the concentrated anguish of a demon. The machinery at last began to stir. It seemed to me that every vein in my body was an icy worm. My nerves stretched to an intenser pitch-large drops of sweat rolled from my forehead, and my heart stopped-almost. It struck! and I fell back in my chair, in a paroxysm of hysterical laughter! I have watched often since, and have been in situ

There is something exceedingly impressive in the breaking in of church bells on the stillness of the Sabbath. I doubt whether it is not more so in the heart of a populous city than anywhere else. The presence of any single, strong feeling, in the minds of a great people, has something of awfulness in it which exceeds even the impressiveness of Nature's breathless Sabbath. I know few things more imposing than to walk the street of a city when the peal of the early bells is just beginning. The deserted pavements, the closed windows of the places of business, the decent gravity of the solitary passenger, and, over all, the feeling in your own bosom that the fear of God is brooding like a great shadow over the thousand human beings who are sitting still in their dwellings around you, were enough, if there were no other circumstance, to hush the heart into a religious fear. But when the bells peal