harmonics, to clothe the tender but fiery soul of
ever-living melodies. Soothing their jarring dissonances into sweet
accord, he filled their pining wails with that 'divine sorrow,' that
mystic longing for the Infinite, which is the inner voice of every
created heart. If he could not find the _heaven sense_ of the tones, he
found their _earthly meaning_, and caused them to repeat or suggest
every joy and sorrow of which our nature is capable. He forced the
heaven tongue to become _human_, while it retained its _divine_. Without
a model or external archetype, he formed his realm and divined its
changing limits; wide enough to contain all that is noble, holy enough
to exclude all that is low or profane. He forever exorcised the spirits
of Evil--the strong Demons of materialism--from his rhythmed world.
Flinging his spells on the unseen air, he forced it to breathe his
passion, his sighs; he saddened it with his tears, kindled it with his
rapture, until fired and charged with the electric breath of the soul,
it glowed into an atmosphere of Life, swaying at will the wild and
restless heart. He created _Music, the only universal language_, holding
the keys of Memory, and wearing the crown of Hope. Angelo, strange
architect in that dim domain of chaos, thy creation, fleeting,
invisible, and unembodied, is in perpetual, flow; changeful as the play
of clouds, yet stable as the eternal laws by which they form their misty
towers, their glittering fanes, and foam-crested pinnacles! Trackless as
the wind, yet as powerful, thy sweet spirit, Music, floats wherever
beats the human heart, for Rhythm rocks the core of life. Music nerves
the soul with strength or dissolves it in love; she idealizes Pain into
soul-touching Beauty; assuming all garbs, robing herself in all modes,
and moving at ease through every phase of our complicated existence.
White and glittering are her robes, yet she is no aristocrat. She
disdains not to soothe the weary negro in his chains, or to rock the
cradle of the child of shame, as the betrayed and forsaken girl murmurs
broken-hearted lullabies around the young 'inheritor of pain.' She is
with the maiden in the graceful mazes of the gay Mazourka; she inflames
the savage in the barbaric clang of the fierce war-dance; or marks the
measured tramp of the drilled soldiery of civilization. She is in the
court of kings; she makes eloquent the ripe lip of the cultured beauty;
she chants in the dreary cell of the hermit