as the wistful air
that followed the chimes of Sunday bells. It has a stern, almost sombre
guise, until it suddenly glows in transfigured light, as of a choir of
celestial brass.

Slowly we are borne to the less exalted pitch of the first festive
march, and here follows, as at first, the expressive melody where each
hearer may find his own shade of sadness. It does seem to reach a true
passion of regret, with poignant sweet sighs.

At length the sadness is overcome and there is a new animation as
separate voices enter in fugal manner in the line of the march. Now the
festive tune holds sway in lower pace in the basses; but then rings on
high in answer--the wistful melody again and again, in doubled and twice
redoubled pace.

When we hear the _penseroso_ melody once more at the end, we may feel
with the poet a state of resigned cheer.

A remarkable work that shows the influence of modern French harmony
rather than its actual traits, is a SYMPHONY BY GUSTAV STRUBE.[A] It is
difficult to resist the sense of a strain for bizarre harmony, of a
touch of preciosity. The real business of these harmonies is for
incidental pranks, with an after-touch that confesses the jest, or
softens it to a lyric utterance. It cannot be denied that the moving
moments in this work come precisely in the release of the strain of
dissonance, as in the returning melody of the Adagio. Only we may feel
we have been waiting too long. The desert was perhaps too long for the
oasis. _Est modus in rebus_: the poet seems niggardly with his melody;
he may weary us with too long waiting, with too little staying comfort.
He does not escape the modern way of symbolic, infinitesimal melody, so
small that it must, of course, reappear. It is a little like the
wonderful arguments from ciphers hidden in poetry.

[Footnote A: Of Boston,--born in Germany in 1867.]

It cannot he denied that the smallness of phrase does suggest a
smallness of idea. The plan of magic motive will not hold _ad
infinitesimum_. As the turn of the triplet, in the first movement,
twists into a semblance of the Allegro theme, we feel like wondering
with the old Philistine:

... "How all this difference can be
'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee!"

But there is the redeeming vein of lyric melody with a bold fantasy of
mischievous humor and a true climax of a clear poetic design. One reason
seems sometimes alone to justify this new license, this new French
revolution: the del