rmitted the finest shadings. By different
processes the touch of the organ was made as delicate as that of the
piano.

For some years the Swiss organ-makers have been inventing new facilities
which make the organist a sort of magician. The manifold resources of
the marvellous instrument are at his command, obedient to his slightest
wish.

These resources are prodigious. The compass of the organ far surpasses
that of all the instruments of the orchestra. The violin notes alone
reach the same height, but with little carrying power. As for the lower
tones, there is no competitor of the thirty-two-foot pipes, which go two
octaves below the violoncello's low C. Between the _pianissimo_ which
almost reaches the limit where sound ceases and silence begins, down to
a range of formidable and terrifying power, every degree of intensity
can be obtained from this magical instrument. The variety of its timbre
is broad. There are flute stops of various kinds; tonal stops that
approximate the timbre of stringed instruments; stops for effecting
changes in which each note, formed from several pipes, bring out
simultaneously its fundamental and harmonic sounds; stops which serve to
imitate the instruments of the orchestra, such as the trumpet, the
clarinet, and the cremona (an obsolete instrument with a timbre peculiar
to itself) and the bassoon. There are celestial voices of several kinds,
produced by combinations of two simultaneous stops which are not tuned
in perfect unison. Then we have the famous _Vox Humana_, a favorite with
the public, which is alluring even though it is tremulous and nasal, and
we have the innumerable combinations of all these different stops, with
the gradations that may be obtained through indefinite commingling of
the tones of this marvellous palette.

Add to all this the continual breathing of the monster's lungs which
gives the sounds an incomparable and inimitable steadiness. Human
beings were used for a long time to fill these lungs--blowers working
away with hands and feet. We do much better now. The great organ in
Albert Hall, London, is supplied with air by steam which assures the
organist an inexhaustible supply. Other instruments use gas engines
which are more manageable. Then, there is the hydraulic system, which is
very powerful and easily used, for one has only to pull out a plug to
set the bellows in motion.

These mechanical systems, however, are not entirely free from accidents.
I discover