; she lightens the dusty
wallet of the wanderer. She glitters through the dreams of the Poet; she
breathes through the direst tragedies of noblest souls. On--on she
floats through the wide world, everywhere present, everywhere welcome,
refining, and consecrating our dull life from the Baptismal Font to the
Grave!

All the inner processes of life are guarded by the hand of nature. In
vain would the curiosity of the scalpel knife invade the sanctuary of
the beating heart to lay open the burning mystery of Being. The outraged
Life retreats before it to its last citadel, and the indignant heart,
upon its entrance, refuses to throb more. The citadel is taken; but the
secret of _Life_ is not to be discovered in the kingdom of _Death_. It
is because Music is essentially a _living_ art that we find it
impossible to read the mystery of its being. If Painting touch us, we
can always trace the emotion to its exciting cause; if we weep over the
pages of the Poet, it is because we find our own blighted hopes imaged
there. But why does Music sway us? Where did we learn that language
without words? in what consists its mystic affinities with our spirits?
Why does the harp of David soothe the insanity of Saul? Is not its
festal voice too triumphant to be the accompaniment of our own sad,
fallen being; its breath of sorrow too divine to be the echo of our
petty cares? All other arts arise from the facts of our earthly
existence, but Music has no external archetype, and refuses to submit
her ethereal soul to our curious analysis. _'I am so, because so I am,'_
is the only answer she gives to the queries of materialism. Like the
primitive rock, the skeleton of earth's burning heart, she looms up
through the base of our existence. Addressing herself to some mystic
faculty born before thought or language, she lulls the suffering baby
into its first sleep, using perhaps the primeval and universal language
of the race. For the love which receives the New Born, cadences the
monotonous chant; and human sympathies are felt by the innocent and
confiding infant before his eyes are opened fully upon the light, before
his tongue can syllable a word, his ear detect their divisions, or his
mind divine their significations. But Music looms not only through the
base of our being; like the encompassing sky, her arch spans our
horizon. Lo! is it not the language through which the Angels convey the
secrets of their profound adoration to the Heart of God!