the embrace of summer, and shoot forth broad frondent boughs, which would fill the whole earth? A disease; but the noblest of all, as of her who is in pain and sore travail, but travail that she may be a mother, and say, Behold there is a new man born!'-Chartism, p. 113. No! Mr. Carlyle, it is no such travail-it is the bursting of a wen! ART. VI.-Ideen und Betrachtungen über die Eigenschaften der Musik (Ideas and Reflections on the Properties of Music). Hanover. 1839. pp. 50. THIS little work is the well-known, though not openly-avowed, production of Prince George of Hanover; and it is with unfeigned pleasure that we refer to it as incontestably establishing his claim to rank as the most accomplished amongst contemporary scions of royalty. Its It is rare to find clearness of thought, precision of expression, and logical arrangement, combined with imagination and enthusiasm, in any authors except those who have been formed by a regular course of training superinduced on an original foundation of genius and good sense; nor, at the present moment, do we remember one on Walpole's long list of royal and noble authors, to whom the praise of these qualities can be impartially assigned. All of them, however, are to be found in the tract before us. scope is not extensive, nor are its views particularly remarkable for originality; but within the narrow limits the illustrious writer has prescribed to himself, he walks with the steady, confident, practised step of a master-keeping the main object constantly in view-analysing, defining, illustrating, and clearing the ground before him as he moves on-diverging occasionally to give vent to feelings excited by the mention of some glorious production of the art, but invariably returning at the precise moment that would be dictated by the severest rules of criticism. We are afraid to speak warmly of the language, because one of its chief merits, the felicitous use of compounds, will not appear in our translated specimens; but its perspicuity, simplicity, and total absence of pretension will appear; and these are merits which readers, moderately conversant with the long, clumsy, entangled sentences, and the ambitious soarings and divings (into mist or mud, as the case may be), by which so much of the best literature of Germany is defaced, will not fail to appreciate at their true value in a young enthusiast, writing for the first time on a subject peculiarly calculated to suggest trains of thought and feeling which sober-minded people would smile at or condemn. With these few prefatory remarks, we proceed to give a brief abstract of the publication; it being beside our present purpose to make it the basis of a regular treatise on the subject,-according to the established practice (occasionally more honoured in the breach than the observance) of our craft. In a modest preface the prince warmly vindicates music from the imputation of being fit only for the amusement of the connoisseur, and claims a place amongst the most exalted objects of culture for this cherished idol of his soul:- From earliest youth has he been devoted to her, his companion and comforter through life-let him succeed in gaining over one new worshipper, or impressing one disciple with a clearer conviction of her worth-let him only establish her ethereal origin, or induce a single reader to employ her high gifts to celebrate the Divine Author of her being, and the full purpose of this essay will be satisfied.' The Introductory Remarks and Inquiries,' which come next, are an attempt to define music, or resolve it into its elements; and the Prince certainly extricates himself from this embarrassing task much better than the generality of German metaphysicians would have done. If he does not always quite satisfy us, we can follow him : 'What is music? Music is a language in tones. By means of music, thoughts, feelings, occurrences, natural phenomena, pictures, scenes from life of every kind, are as distinctly and intelligibly expressed as by any language whatever in words; and we ourselves are likewise able to express ourselves and understand others by their help. We shall therefore term music "a language in tones," or "a tone-speech," and the next thing to be done is to define the meaning of tone. What do we understand by the word tone? Every sound is called tone which is capable of being measured or weighed with another fixed sound. It is produced by regular vibrations or undulations of the air, which are caused either by the breath, as in singing and wind instruments, or by the stirring or touching of a string, or any other object or body capable of sound. Any collection of these measured tones depending on fixed rules is called music, in the same manner as by a collection of articulated sounds that which, in the more confined sense, we term language, is produced. And as a systematic putting-together of letters begets words, which influence our minds in many ways-just so, by the puttingtogether of tones we produce sounds, which equally affect our feelings. Or, to vary the phrase, the word-language is addressed directly to the mind, whilst the tone-language asserts its claim to the heart and soul, and operates indirectly and through them on the mind. That our feelings are to be affected by tones, however, is only to be explained in this manner that God gave man at his creation the capacity to communicate his thoughts and feelings, or excite similar thoughts and feelings in others, by certain applications and alternations of tones correspond ing with certain emotions of the soul. 'Of all man's senses, the sight and hearing are those through which the greatest influence upon the mind and heart is produced; which, therefore, constitute the most powerful springs of the moral and mental perceptions, actions, and judgments of mankind. But the hearing would seem the most powerful and operative of the two, because inharmonious, jarring tones are capable of shocking and torturing our feelings to their inmost core to such an extent as to make us almost beside ourselves an effect which it is impossible to produce by a bad painting, a desolate tract of country, or the worst of poems.' It is perfectly true that the bare contemplation of a daub does not throw Mr. Rogers into convulsions like Hogarth's Enraged Musician; and we ourselves do not recollect having had anything more than a strong tendency to slumber to bear up against during the perusal of the worst epic ever laid upon our dissecting table. But the obvious reason is, that, amongst the several objects of repugnance above mentioned, disagreeable sounds alone affect us physically through the nerves: for example, a person utterly devoid of musical taste or sensibility may be made to suffer acutely from a sound that sets the teeth on edge. The proper analogy, therefore, as regards the sight, would be, not between bad music and bad pictures, but the glare of a red flame and the grating of a file; whilst, as regards literary productions, there is no analogy at all, since the very worst of them can exercise no direct material influence upon our frames: very fortunately for reviewers, for we should otherwise be in the condition of the government musket-borers, who, prior to a recent invention to prevent them from inhaling the metallic dust, were never known to live above two years. Neither are we quite satisfied with the next paragraph, in which it is laid down that the composer can do nothing without the profoundest insight into human inclinations, impulses, and passions; but that, when he has obtained this insight, he may turn the worst poems to account by making them the basis of the sublimest music. Were this true, the claims of music to rank as an intellectual art would be sadly lowered; nor does it much help the matter to assert that it is capable of exciting deep, inexplicable sensations even in the most uncultivated listener, without requiring him to stand almost on the same level with the artist; which is seldom the case with other arts.' As a mere matter of fact, however, these statements are not devoid of plausibility. Mozart once extemporised a touching love-song on the single word affetto, followed by an equally admirable song of rage on the word "perfido; and we have seen Handel enthusiastically enjoyed by persons who would infallibly prefer the Peacock at Home' to Paradise Lost,' and a court-painter's likeness of Lord Normanby in blue and gold to the St. Paul preaching at Athens. We We pass over the etymological remark on the word music (most plausibly derivable, according to the prince, from the Muses); and there is nothing requiring to be quoted in the section on Melody and Harmony, which are described and distinguished from one another in the ordinary manner. But the section on instrumental music affords such ample field for the author's peculiar powers, that we are tempted to abridge or translate the greater part of it; and there are few readers of feeling, unacquainted with the original, but will feel grateful to us for enabling them to follow him through some of his glowing descriptions of the effects produced by masterpieces on listeners gifted with the required portion of sensibility. Instrumental music possesses the high prerogative, not merely of expressing every sensation of the human heart, but also of portraying, in a manner universally intelligible, the incidents of social life, the glad and sad occurrences of earthly existence, its occupations and repose, its perfect tranquillity, nay, the very neighbourhoods and landscapes, better, more closely, and more home to the feelings, than Painting and Poetry can do it. And for this reason may it well be compared to a universal language. It does not, like vocal music, require the aid of words from any language whatever to make itself understood in the same sense and manner amongst all civilised communities on the face of the globe, and exercise the same influence on the heart and soul of nations differing the most widely, according to the object which the composer has in view. For example, dance-music is every where felt as a challenge to the dance: solemn serious music gives every one a solemn serious turn; soft harmonies excite soft sensations in every heart; wailing notes call forth sadness and sympathy in every bosom. Similar phenomena may also be observed with relation to the effects of particular instruments. "The sublime stately playing of the organ will excite no feelings but those of devotion in any one: the trumpet is everywhere the instrument of war and jubilee: the horn summons to the chase, and awakens gay sensations: the sackbut is the friend of mourning and solemnity. At least these instruments, in their origin and according to their peculiar qualities, were destined to these ends, and (independently of their varied application to music in its perfected shape) are still almost universally employed for them.' After contending that the first musical instruments were attempts to imitate the voice, and quoting a few scriptural authorities as to their history, he proceeds as follows: The composer then, who is thoroughly acquainted with the peculiar properties-the compass, the power, the softness of each instrument, and can calculate their effects, is qualified to attain the most surprising and wonderful results by the skilful application of these properties; he has within his reach the means of producing a complete, animated, and intelligible poetry by instrumental music, without ever feeling the necessity necessity for words. Many classical compositions prove this: above all, the masterpieces of the immortal Beethoven. How distinctly, for example, in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphonies are the daily ocurrences and individual scenes of country life pictured to the listener? In the First Scene, a truly graphic description of a rural tranquilly-happy region, with animated things of every kind, with the tinkling bells of the flocks at pasture, the pipes of the herdsmen, the busy movements of the reapers and ploughmen, is represented in so lifelike a manner that the pencil of the best painter could not portray them with greater verisimilitude or truth. The Second Scene, "at the brook" (am Bache), brings before us the stillness of the forest, the soft rippling of the brook, the splashing of the water, its quiet winding course, the song of birds-the cuckoo, the lark, the nightingale-with illusory exactness. The approach and assembling of the shepherds and country-people with their rustic music, which summons them to the dance-their dances, their harmless prattle, their lively jests, are given in the Third Scene of the Symphony precisely as they may be found in reality at the festive meetings of the country people. In the Fourth Scene, the harmonious festivity of these rural pleasures is disturbed. A storm gradually gathers in the horizon: on a sudden it bursts forth majestically and pours down with fearful might. The exact representation of this wonderful natural phenomenon fills the listener with the same sensations by which his soul is penetrated during an actual storm-with terror and astonishment, and with admiration of the power of the Almighty! for perhaps never by means of any other production of art were the four grand elements of storm-thunder and lightning, rain and wind, in their most fearful conjunction-so deceivingly imitated, so deeply and thoroughly portrayed, as by this music! And how strikingly is this confused conflict of the elements appeased! The storm gradually passes off and disperses, resounding weaker and weaker through the neighbourhood till it finally disappears; and here too the listener believes himself transported by the truth of the musical resemblance into the reality of the scene. Once again the composer shows his knowledge of men's feelings (which, after so fearful an escape, are absorbed in gratitude to Providence), when, in the glorious prayer, he portrays the people thanking God for his gracious protection, for his heavenly beneficence. "The high province of music to represent by tones the various incidents of life more clearly and impressively than any other art, as well as to excite and express the manifold feelings of the human heart-after the accurate and profound examination of so complete and masterly a composition, it were impossible to dispute. "In further confirmation of the above theory, I feel tempted to adduce some passages from the great Haydn's magnificent production The Creation. How fraught with expression, how true, in the music, is the "escape of the troops of evil spirits into the depths of the gulf down to everlasting night!" How characteristically are the words 2 L 2 "Despair, |