music which is divine,
My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;
Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine;
Loosen the notes in a silver shower;
Like an herbless plain, for the gentle rain,
I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.

'Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound--
More--oh, more--I am thirsting yet!
It loosens the serpent which care has bound
Upon my heart to stifle it;
The dissolving strain, in every vein,
Passes into my heart and brain.'

SHELLEY.

Artists and litterateurs are the true representatives of the countries
in which they live; because they alone reveal to us the secret
throbbings of the great national heart; and the warm and sympathetic
feelings which they excite in foreign climes, are _golden links_ drawing
more closely the ties of mutual understanding and affection, welding
them together in that generous _reciprocal_ esteem and comprehension,
which is destined to _unite_ all climes and tongues.

'A touch of nature makes the whole world kin.'

The sympathies of life are widening and increasing. Societies are
constantly arising devoting themselves to the solacing of human misery;
eager sympathies are evinced by different countries in the sufferings of
distant lands; ready and substantial aid is gladly tendered in cases of
pestilence and famine; and religious intolerance and bigotry are raving
themselves to rest. Christ is more and creeds are less than of old. The
fact that a free government is now in successful operation, in which
(when one false element, slavery, shall be forever eliminated) the
voluntary annexation of new states and new countries would be but new
ties of strength, with the consentaneous and related facts above
quoted, tend to prove that humanity is entering upon a new era; that it
is not destined to trail its passionate and quivering wings much longer
through the mire of mere materialism; but that newer and higher life is
spreading _simultaneously_ through all its members; that the elevating
love of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, is hourly penetrating it
more deeply; that after its intellect shall have been trained by the
sciences--its force increased by industry, commerce, and
statesmanship--its inmost heart will be developed by the Charities, now,
as with the subtile Greeks, _one_ with the Graces--the arts for the
manifestation of the Beautiful. Everything tends to prove, even the wars
now waging for national entities,