ference be taken for incapacity, which has become a fault so common as to have begotten a fear in many of having the variety of their abilities known, lest it should too much prejudice their reputation for skill in those things in which they especially excel. Cicero's language to the young orator may be not inaptly applied to musicians and artists. Whatever widens their experience in any mental or emotional direction, or gives increased knowledge in any branch of learning, increases their power; we do not master one subject best by frequently going through its routine, but by grappling with the most difficult, we become to perform the more simple with grace and readiness. The world of thought must pay tribute to every master mind; some particular bent call it as by the voice of divinity to its adopted mission. Often is that voice sadly heard calling by some seeming terrible dispensation. As the flower yields its full wealth of fragrance when crushed to earth, the wind harp its most heavenly tone on being swept to breaking by rude blasts, so genius, under almost insupportable burdens in bowing or opposing, yields beauties before unheard of, save in words of revealing, and splendors unseen save in heavenly vision. But even this does not free it from censure. The veil that envelops it is rudely thrust aside, and as the vulgar gaze discerns little save the common attributes of humanity, it condemns its weakness, in ignorance of its almost superhuman strength and grandeur. Is he, after all, nothing but a man? What should he be more? is the significant query, since to accomplish one's manhood is to fulfil our earthly destiny. A sacred relic of a higher nature lingers in every human soul that experiences a veneration for genius-be he artist, poet, philosopher, musician, deal he in the complex and many windings of abstruse science, fathom he the depths of the knowable in the laws of matter, soar he to the serene bounds that limit the pure ray of mind, or be he moved with the troubled tossings of upheaving emotions. Whether painting be more broad in its expression than music, the latter possesses advantages not shared to its fullest extent by poetry-directness of address, which amounts to such fulness of appliance as to take captive not alone the eye as in sculpture, nor the mind as in poetry, but our whole being, sense, soul, mind, eye, thought, and comprehension. In this respect it is so delicately adapted to the condition of our being, that it becomes a most interesting question, to what noble purposes it may be applied. The Romish Church was true to the requirements of our natures, when it employed music and the arts to uplift the imagination and the senses. Man was false when he idolized the means instead of the end of his elevation. The souls of the musician and poet are not only not diversely constituted, but their plan and method of expression are similar. The perfect musical composition requires as much consistency as the lyric poem. If disjuncta membra has been the fashion in either, it is nevertheless inadmissible. As the lyric in its changes of movement should glide so gracefully as not to mar the unity, so should the canzonet. And the symphony loses all the effect of its grandeur when it fails to observe this great principle. As the lyric poet should be not only consistent in his arrangement and grouping, but have a delicate sense of rhythm, or measure, or music, so should the composer have not only an ear for sweet sounds, but judgment in the conduct of their movements, never changing the last so much as to destroy the unity of the sentiment. For the musician or poet to be guilty of such inconsistency, is as palpable a fault as for an artist to represent a dancing satyr and a flowery lawn on the same canvas with our crucified Lord. Again, as the lyric poet must be governed in his choice of measure by his thought or sentiment, or rather, as the latter must be allowed to flow in their native channel, the heroic in iambics and spondees, the lively in amphibrachs and trochees, the light narrative in mixed measures, which forms the English hexameter, so should the composer's thoughts be woven in and out along the chosen key, never losing sight of the prime sentiment to be expressed, except in very long compositions, in the way of episode or graceful variation. The question, whether particular styles of music are native with certain nations, is similar to the one which at present is vexing some of our most cultivated American scholars, whether the hexameter is natural in English verse. Wherein there lies two difficulties-first, in determining what the English hexameter is, it differing so much from the classic as to make it an invention rather than an imitation; and second, how far our thoughts are wont to flow in accustomed channels. All arts are born of the mind of a people, and not the clime, any farLet the American ther than the latter influences the former. mind be accustomed to nothing but French floritures, and its musical compositions would partake of that type. Two things are necessary in order to high attainments, the ability and the occasion. In capricious and fantastic composition, in largeness, breadth and richness, the musical has a great advantage, as also in the representative. The rhythm of particular lines in poetry has a resemblance to certain sounds in nature, and great depth and beauty of feeling give musical richness to the verse, but poetry is not an art representative by sounds. Whenever it ascends to this felicity, it exhibits an exception rather than a rule. Music has been employed to represent simply by its recurrence of sounds every variety of dance, from that of the negro and faun, to the airy movements of spirits. A chime of bells has been known to suggest the ethereal movements of beatified spirits. That harmony which delights us in sculptured groups, in arrangement of coloring everywhere in nature, from the delicate apple-bud amidst its wealth of light green, to the daisied lawn "God's beauty fills the daisied slope,”— from the blue and gray of the sky to the monotones of the sounding sea, in the graceful shape of the human form and pencilled loveliness of living outline in the human face divine, is pre-eminently the characteristic and soul of music. The yearnings of the spirit for good, for beauty, for truth and holiness, so deep, so silent, so speechless, are made to leap unconsciously at its ethereal breath. In its serenest shrine the pictured loveliness, the imaged "je ne sais quoi" is named harmony. There is no speech in these silent depths, save through her voice. Though at first we hesitated at ranking Music among the arts rather than the sciences, it will now be apparent that they all require great knowledge and judgment, and are all equally arts. The great works of the composer are no less creations than Moore's, or Burns', or Schiller's, or Byron's, and have a universal language. Eve's Lament would fall inane on the ears of the myriads who speak a different tongue, while the same sentiments conveyed by Music would enchain alike Gentile and Jew, Barbarian and Greek. The grand symphony is the lyric in four or more parts, the opera histrionic music. The melodies, simple lyrics. The oratorio, a grand and sublime anthem. Music is capable of rendering each part here assigned it, without the aid of adventitious words. Music is a gift of speech, is to develop and enlarge our culture, elevate our de sires, ennoble our aspirations, delight by its sweetness and largeness, bind all kindred in one common bond of amity. The high, the low, the beggar and king, are addressed by it as one. Vice becomes innocence in attempting to express itself in its harmonious channels. Wild and fitful as the wailing winds, it is soul-full still, and whatever it approaches it turns to its own likeness. Fathom all its hidden depths and capabilities here we cannot. The limitless expression of the powers of the human soul may not be sounded until that soul becomes developed in the infinite cycles through which it is destined to blossom and expand. MARIE STUART. Histoire de Marie Stuart. Par M. MIGNET. 2d Edition. Lettres, Instructions et Mémoires de Marie Stuart, Reine d'Écosse publiés sur les originaux et les manuscrits du State paper office de Londres et des principales archives, et bibliothèques de l'Europe et accompagnés d'un résum chronologique. Par le PRINCE ALEXANDRE LABANOFF. Londres, 1844-5. 7 Vol. 8vo. THE earliest characteristic of Scottish history is a deep-rooted and resolute love of independence. The Romans tried to subdue them, and failed. The Saxons, Angles, and Danes came each in turn, with all the impulse of a successful invasion, and each was compelled to give back. The Norman Conquest brought a new enemy against them, who, combining artifice with strength, won greater advantages over them than had ever been won before. But the native love of independence was still unsubdued, and the English kings, becoming engaged in their long and disastrous wars with France, left Scotland free to enjoy and abuse the treasure which it had preserved so nobly and so long. Still Scotland was a divided kingdom, and the war without only ceased to give space for bloodier and more bitter wars within. The highlands were held by their old Celtic owners, who lived the wild life of mountaineers, with the fixed customs, tenacious affections, and fierce enmities of clans. In the lowlands, native Scots were intermingled with Saxon and Norman emigrants, whom the Scottish kings had allowed to settle there between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Thus two races, the Celtic and Teutonic, two languages, the Gaelic and English, and two systems of organization, the clan and the feudal, with the two states of society which belong to each, were united under one crown, within the contracted area of 29,600 square miles. The aspect of the country corresponded to the wild and rugged character of its inhabitants. Upwards of six hundred square miles of its narrow surface were filled by lakes and rivers; even in our own days, less than a third of the remainder has been reduced to cultivation; heaths and moors are scattered among the rich valleys and meadow-lands of the South; and in the North, bleak and misty mountains fill up the whole region, leaving here and there strips of fertile land, from which resolute industry could scarcely extract enough to eke out a scanty and precarious subsistence. The cities were few and small, the communication between them inconvenient and unsafe. Instead of neat cottages and peaceful hamlets, you would have met in every league two fortresses or watch-towers, built as a refuge for the inhabitants from the first impulse of private wars. Men travelled in full armor in the midst of armed attendants, and carefully gathered in their herds, at evening, under the battlements of their castles, for fear that they should be swept off, during the night, by some sudden incursion of a private or a public enemy. Feudal life weighed heavily upon the country, which was distracted by the private wars of the nobles, and drained of its scanty resources to carry out petty schemes of ambition or revenge. Some families united the rank of feudal lords and chiefs of clan, and by firing a beacon, could call around them in a few hours, forces strong enough to face their sovereign in the field. Little else was left the king but his crown and title, and the privilege of receiving an oath of fealty, which no one observed, who thought it for his interest to break it. But no sooner did the kings of Scotland find themselves free to turn their attention towards their own affairs, than they resolved to set bounds to the power of the nobility. James I. |