lause which the actor
is apt to appropriate, what dramatic writer, in our own experience or
history, has been greeted with such homage as that paid to Handel,
when the king and people of England stood up in trembling awe to hear
his _Hallelujah_ chorus?--that which hailed Mozart from the enraptured
theatres of Prague when listening to his greatest operas?--that which
fanned into new fire the dying embers of Haydn's spirit, when the
_Creation_ was performed at Vienna, to delight his declining days,
before an audience of 1500 of the Austrian nobility and gentry?

The ancient poets felt the force of those emotions which musical sound
produces, and shadowed out under its name the great principles of
human harmony and social order. Societies were founded, cities built,
and countries cultivated by Orpheus and Amphion, and men of analogous
fame, who wielded at will this mythic power, and made all the
susceptibilities of nature "sequacious of the lyre."

In one respect the fame of the composer is less diffusible than that
of the poet. He requires various mechanical means and appliances for
his full success. His works must be performed in order to be felt. He
cannot be read, like the poet, in the closet, or in the cottage, or on
the street-stall, where the threadbare student steals from day to day,
as he lingers at the spot, new draughts of delicious refreshment. Few
can sit down and peruse a musical composition even for its melody; and
very few, indeed, can gather from the silent notes the full effect of
its splendid combinations. Yet even here the great master has
analogous compensations. The idle amateur, the boarding-school girl,
the street minstrel, and the barrel-organ, reflect his more palpable
beauties; and, subjecting them to the severe test of incessant
reiteration, make us wonder that "custom cannot stale" the infinite
variety that is shut up even in his simplest creations.

But the creative musician has an immeasurable advantage over both the
painter and the poet in the absence of all local limitation to his
popularity. Here, indeed, the painter is the least favoured by the
nature of his art. The immediate presence of the prophet could only be
felt at Mecca; the perfection of painting can only be seen at Rome.
The poet has a wider range, and can be prized and appreciated wherever
the language is known in which he writes. But the musician is still
more highly privileged. He speaks with a tongue intelligible alike to