gratify to the full his passionate love of music, and sing his immortal song; moreover he was full of faith and trust in God.

Beethoven, on the other hand, was wayward, irritable, and fitful in temper, and, even before his deafness came on, afflicted with gloom. Music was the one and only art for which he cared, and in its solitary channel he poured forth all his soul. He had thus no other outlet for his genius; and his religious faith (I do not refer to his doctrinal belief, which was that of the Church of Rome, but to his personal trust in a Saviour) was not strong.

But conceding all this, those two mighty masters may be fitly regarded as furnishing characteristic examples of the relative severity of blindness and deafness, when they befall those who once saw and heard. We should every one of us, I suppose, prefer the lot of Milton to that of Beethoven, and find it more easy to console a blind painter than a deaf musician. I speak thus because I presume it is a matter of universal experience, that we can more easily and vividly recall and conceive sights, than we can recall and conceive sounds. It costs us no effort to summon before us, even though destitute of the painter's gifts, endless landscapes, cities or processions, and faces innumerable; but even rarely endowed musicians can mentally reproduce few, comparatively, of the melodies or harmonies they know, if debarred from uttering them vocally, or through some instrument. We may test this point by the experience of our dreams.

If I mistake not, though I would not speak dogmatically on this point, we never fully dream a sound. Coleridge in his "Kubla Khan" declares

"A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora."

But this was the visionary vision of a poet; in dreams, I imagine, we hear no sounds, unless it be those of the world without. We carry on many conversations, and marvellous things are told us; but these, like our waking communings with ourselves, and mental hummings of tunes, are uttered by voiceless lips in speechless tongue. Dreamland is a silent land, and all the dwellers in it are deaf and dumb.

How different is it with sight! No objects beheld by our waking eyes impress

us so vividly as the splendid and awful dissolving views which pass before us in the visions of the night. So much is this the case, that when in daylight life we encounter some reality more startling, more joyful or terrible than most, we utter the strange paradox: "It can not be true; it must be a dream!" I infer from this that the Blind, who must dream or imagine all the sights which they see, are, cæterius paribs, more fortunate than the Deaf, who must dream the sounds which they hear. In the life of Niebuhr there is a striking description of the long and happy hours which his blind old father spent in recalling the striking scenes which in early life he had witnessed in the Holy Land and other eastern countries; and every child who looks into its pillow to see wonders there, could record a parallel experience; but I know of no corresponding fact in the history of the deaf. At all events, an active and joyous memory of sounds is rare among them. The ear is accordingly an organ which we can worse afford to lose than the eye; and one, therefore, which should be all the more cared for. It is still more susceptible of education than the eye, and can be educated more quickly.

Thus a love of music is much more frequent than a love of painting or sculpture; and you will reach the hearts and touch the feelings of the majority of mankind more quickly by singing them a song than by showing them a picture. In truth, the sensitiveness of the ear to melody and to harmony is so great that we not only seek to gratify it when bent upon recreation, but even in the midst of the hardest labor we gratify it if we can. Two carpenters planing the same piece of wood will move their planes alternately; so that, when one is pushing his forward, the other is drawing his back, thereby securing a recurrence of sounds, which, from their inequality, would be harsh if they were heard simultaneously. In the same way two paviors, driving in stones, bring down their mallets time about; and so do working engineers when they are forging a bar; and the smith, when he has dealt a succession of monotonous blows, relieves his ear by letting his hammer ring musically on the anvil; and I need not tell you how sailors, heaving the anchor or hoisting the sails, sing together in chorus; nor remind you that most serious of all hard work, fighting, is helped on by the drum and the trumpet.

This natural inclination of man toward music shows itself from the first. The infant's eye, we have seen, is aimless for a season; but its ear is alert from the beginning. It enters upon life with a cry, and its first sorrow, expressed in a sound, is soothed by the first sound of its mother's voice. One-half of a nurse's time, I suppose, is spent in singing; and baby, when not sleeping or drinking, is either making or hearing music.

Now is it not a thing to be deeply lamented, that the sensitive ears with which almost every one of us has been gifted by God, are so little educated, that they might as well be stuffed with tow, or plugged with lead, for any good use we make of them? To be sure we keep them sufficiently open to hear all the gossip about us, and can most of us tell when the cannons are firing; but as for training them to that exquisite sense of melody or harmony of which they are susceptible, how few do it!

Our national music is famous all the world over; our song-tunes and our psalm-tunes are listened to with delight in every clime. Yet how few can sing the ever-welcome songs of Burns; in how few churches will you hear psalm-singing that, as music, is other than a grief to an educated ear? This must be mended! Let every one so train, and educate, and fully develop the faculty of hearing that is in those ears of his, that he may listen with full delight and appreciation to the songs of birds, and the roar of the sea, the wailing of the winds, and the roll of the thunder; and may be able to cheer his soul and calm his heart by hearkening to the music of his fellow-men, and in turn rejoice their hearts by making music. for them.

St. Paul says that none of the voices or sounds in the world are "without signification ;" and you will find that for an appreciating ear, they all have exquisite meaning; how much, moreover, education can do for this organ I need not tell you. The subject is far too wide for discussion here; and I must only allude to it. The following points are worth our notice.

Although the ear has a greatly more limited range in space and time than the eye, it is in a very remarkable respect a more perfect instrument than the organ of sight. The eye can regard but a single object at a time, and must shift its glance from point to point when many

objects are before it which it wishes to compare together. And when prosecuting this comparison, between, for example, two bodies, it has in reality but one imprinted on it, and compares the perceived image of this one with the remembered image of the other. This fact escapes us in ordinary vision, because the impression or shadow of a body on the retina remains for some time after the object is withdrawn from the sphere of sight-a fact of which we can easily assure ourselves by whirling before our eyes a lighted brand, when it appears, not a succession of flaming points, as it actually is when so whirled, but an unbroken circle of fire. And further, we do not, in looking about us, take notice of the constant motions of the eyeball which bring different objects within the sphere of vision. If, however, whilst looking at no larger surface than a printed page, we close one eye and lay the finger on it, whilst we read with the other, we can trace in the closed eye which follows the motions of the open one, how continually it shifts itself from point to point, and gazes successively at objects which we imagine it to see simultaneously.

It is otherwise with the ear. Although perfectly untutored, it can listen to many sounds at once, distinguish their difference, and compare them together. Every one must be conscious of this. The simplest two-part tune demands from its hearer the simultaneous perception of a bass and a treble note, which impress the ear at exactly the same moment, but are perfectly distinguished from each other. A piano-forte player executing such a tune, requires alternately to shift his eyes from the base to the treble line, for he can not see simultaneously the two notes as he can hear them; and every one may easily observe the contrasted power of the eye and the ear by trying to read simultaneously all the staves of a four-part song, whilst he is hearing it sung. Even an imperfect musical ear will without an effort distinguish each of the four voices singing different notes; whilst the most skilful eye can not read more than a note or a chord at a time. I suppose every one has noticed the contrast between the air of anxiety which musical performers wear, when playing from music, compared with the serene or exultant look which sits upon their faces when playing from memory or improvising. This applies even to the greatest musicians, and

can not be conquered by education; for no training will confer upon the eye powers similar to those which the ear possesses without any training.

Our conceptions of the domain of the ear are greatly exalted by a consideration of what has been stated, especially when we add the fact that not merely a twopart or a four-part song, but the most complex harmonies performed by the largest band, may be heard by a single ear. Picture to yourself the contrast between a great orchestra containing some hundred performers and instruments, and that small music-room of ivory, no bigger than a cherry-stone, which we call an ear, where there is ample accommodation for all of them to play together. The players, indeed, and their instruments, are not admitted. But what of that, if their music be? Nay, if you only think of it, what we call a musical performance, is, after all, but the last rehearsal. The true performance is within the ear's musicroom, and each one of us has the whole orchestra to himself. When we thus realize the wondrous capabilities of the organ of hearing, I think we shall not fail to find an intellectual and æsthetical as well as a great moral admonition in the Divine words: "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

It is not necessary to enlarge upon the æsthetics of hearing. All great poets have been passionate lovers of music, and it has received due honor at their hands. Most of the great painters and sculptors have been lovers of music also, in this respect being more catholic than their brethren, the great musicians, who have often been totally indifferent to the arts which appeal to the eye; and double honor has thus been paid to the ear.

I will, therefore, refer only to three æsthetical aspects of hearing :

1. Of all the senses it is the one which most readily and most largely lends itself to impassioned, emotional, or, as we otherwise name it, poetical or æsthetical feeling. The retiringness of the ear is one great cause of this. The mechanism of hearing does not obtrude itself. The conditions of sound are known only to a small fraction of mankind; and the great majority of us die without even faintly realizing that the chief vehicle of sound, the atmosphere, has any existence. Music thus comes to us we can not tell whence or how; and the less we are reminded of the mechanical or formal appliances by

But

which an art appeals to our emotions, the more surely and profoundly are they stirred by it. The nostril is the only organ of sense that can compare with the ear in this respect, but its range is far more limited. The eye is much less fortunately circumstanced. The threads of the canvas, the shape and carving of the picture-frame, the string that suspends it, the nail on which it hangs, and the wall behind it, all disturb our delight at a picture, as the stains on a piece of marble, and the tarnish on bronze, do our delight at sculpture. The substantial material in which the painter and sculptor must work, continually, and often harshly, force themselves upon the fleshly sense, and conflict with the purely emotional appreciation of their works. music is never more delightful than when listened to in utter darkness, without obtrusion of the music-paper, or instrument, or performer; and whilst we forget that we have ears, and are content to be living souls floating in a sea of melodious sound. To be awaked from sleep by delightful music, is to me the highest conceivable sensuous pleasure. A certain ethereality thus belongs preeminently to music, as it does in a lesser degree to fragrance. The most prosaic, formal and utilitarian of mankind, for whom no other fine art has any charms, acknowledge the attractions of music. Alone of all the arts, it has suffered nothing from the intensely scientific and strongly utilitarian temper of modern times; and even in the most faithless of recent epochs, music has thriven when every other æsthetic development was reduced to

zero.

Whatever, accordingly, we envy the ancients, we need not envy them their music; they paid no such honor to the ear as we do; and it is remarkable that, at the deadest period of the last century, from the sleep of which nothing short of the French Revolution was sufficient to awake us, when only physical science was progressing, Handel and Haydn gave to us works which will be forgotten only when music of more amazing genius shall startle the world; and in unbroken succession from their day, Mozart, Beethoven, thoven, Weber, Rossini, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and many more, have placed us, in the matter of music, in advance of all the earlier ages.

2. The peculiar ethereality of music is doubtless one of the reasons why we so

willingly believe that creatures of a higher order than ourselves are specially given to song; and accept, as most credible, the declaration that immortal beings find the only sufficient expression of their emotions in praise. It was a splendid theory of the ancient Pagan age that the whole visible heavens were melodious with a music which gifted ears were privileged to hear, when star sang to star, and constellations rejoiced together. And it is a still grander belief of modern Christian men, that within the invisible heavens angels "that excel in strength," and amazing human spirits, never cease their immortal song. But, apart from the sympathy which the imagination has with such a belief, it commends itself to our reason by an argument which none can disown, and which supplies the justification of that preeminent importance which, from the days of King David the Psalmist to our own, has been attached to the musical part of religious worship.

Music forms the universal language which, when all other languages were confounded, the confusion of Babel left unconfounded. The white man and the black man, the red man and the yellow man, can sing together, however difficult they may find it to talk to each other. And both sexes and all ages may thus express their emotions simultaneously; for in virtue of the power of the ear to distinguish, side by side, those differing but concordant notes which make up harmony, there is not only room but demand for all the qualities of voice which childhood, adolescence, maturity and old age supply.

If this apply to earthly music, how much more to heavenly! Though every thing else in the future state may be dim and dark, and in all respects matter of faith or hope, not of vivid realization, this at least can be entered into, that all the children of Adam and Eve could unite in a common song. Of all the organs of the body, therefore, the ear is the one which, though for its present gratification it is beholden solely to the passing moment, can with the greatest confidence anticipate a wider domain hereafter.

3. In consonance with that home in eternity for which the ear expectantly waits, to it is promised the earliest participation in the life to come.

vinely authenticated fact appears to have made a profound impression on men of

genius of all temperaments since the days of our Saviour's presence upon earth. Many of you must be familiar with that beautiful hymn of the Latin church, the "Dies Irae," in which the solemnities of the last judgment, and the sound of the trump of doom, are echoed in mournful music from the wailing lines. Sir Walter Scott translated this sacred song. Goethe has introduced a striking portion of it into the cathedral scene in Faust, where the Tempter assails Margaret. Martin Luther's hymn reads like an echo of it. After all, it is itself but the echo and paraphrase of passages in the New Testament, and Handel, when he composed the "Messiah," went to the original for those words which he has set to undying music. From these words we learn that the summons to the life to come will be addressed to the ear, and it first shall awake to the consciousness of a new existence; "for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."

THE CHOICE OF A SCHOOL.

WHATE

WHATEVER great events may be happening, whatever wars and rumors of wars agitate the public mind, there is one private interest which is perennial, and yields in importance to nothing else beneath the stars. The placing of children in school is second to no other obligation which parents face, and as the long summer holidays draw to their close, thoughtful heads of families consider gravely where the boys and girls shall go, what shall be their course of instruction, and to whose care and guardianship the youthful minds in their most receptive period shall be intrusted.

When the decision is simply to send son or daughter to the nearest public or private school which opens its inviting doors, the affair is simple. It gathers difficulty and becomes embarrassing when there is, first, hesitation between the comparative inducements offered by this or that school; second, when the parent, wisely forecasting the future, sees his boy already a collegian, and beyond that a man in full career amid life's activities, and realizes that success or failure for his

entire period of existence on the earth may largely depend on the training received in the school-room.

The parent selecting a school should

keep in mind that the teachers are vastly more potential than the text-books and the teaching. Wanted, a man, a woman, should be the imperative cry of every home, when the thing in question is the impression to be made on character by the person before whom the pupils will sit. Children and young people are quicker than we sometimes think to detect falsehood and hypocrisy; they see with swift and intuitive discernment the man who is true, the woman who is noble, the teacher who is large-minded and sincere. Sometimes the men and women of a community during an entire generation are impressed for good by the strong and large and generous nature of an instructor. The teacher taught when he did not know he was teaching-taught as much by indirection as by intention.

In choosing a school much heed should be given to the associations children will form there. One likes to know that the children his sons and daughters will meet in the daily intercourse of the classroom are of the same refined and cultivated class from which he chooses his friends. Many connections continue in after-life of which the beginnings were laid in school days. Friendships which influence the household life of a dozen families for the better part of a century are traced back, on occasion, to the preparatory school attended by lads and lasses in their teens. One should not leave to accident or mere convenience of locality the associations which young people may find awaiting them at the summons of the school-room bell.

For this young girl it is best that the school chosen should be away from home, in the heart of the deep green country, where she may have fresh air, long nights of quiet sleep, few distractions, no temptations to prematurely enter society. For that shy sister or cousin a school in the immediate neighborhood, with studies at home under the mother's as well as the teacher's eye, is again the best that can be done. The best for a third is perhaps no regular school at all, but instead the resident or visiting governess, with masters coming and going, and studies taken up or dropped, not according to an arbitrary routine, but as may be found most suitable to the development of the girl's intellectual and physical powers.

The danger to be avoided in one case is over-crowding and excessive attention to study; in another, mental and bodily

inertia must be combated. Most parents need constantly to watch themselves, lest in their own natural pride or innocently transparent vanity at the rapid unfolding of their children's minds, they fall into the error of stimulating too rapidly the qualities they admire in their children. It is often found that the very precocious infant becomes the commonplace lad. The brilliant student who carries off all the prizes either loses his balance and ends in clouded mental powers, or lapses into an inefficient and very ordinary sort of man.

One should never insist on keeping a sensitive child in the atmosphere of a school which is repellent and uncomfortable. A school may be found which, along with its other advantages, will confer happiness upon its pupils. No attainments in acquiring facts or learning conjugations and declensions can conpensate a child if he is defrauded during the years between eight and sixteen of what should be youth's inalienable possession-contentment, daily enjoyment, keen and seldom ruffled happiness.Harper's Bazar.

CHILDHOOD BRUTALIZED.

HE action of the Boston School Comm mittee in voting to prohibit the practice of vivisection in the public schools is condemned as unnecessary in certain quarters, on the ground that vivisection has not been adopted here and is not likely to be adopted; but the friends of sound and wholesome education will be inclined to believe that the bar has been

put up none too soon. In other large cities of this country teachers have taken it upon themselves to adopt vivisection for the purpose of instructing young pupils in the elements of anatomy and physiology; and where vivisection is not employed it is becoming the custom, far too often, to resort to the dissection or the bodies of dead animals for the same purpose.

There is such a thing as brutalizing the youthful mind. the youthful mind. By dwelling upon the material aspects of life there is danger of crushing out that feeling of sympathy and wonder which is the bloom of childhood, and the source of all the multiform pleasures associated with the cultivation of the imaginative faculties.

A child naturally regards domestic