motional values, according
to our altering relations therewith; for one relation, one mood, one
emotion succeeds and obliterates the other, till nothing very potent
can remain connected with that particular object. But it matters not
how different the course of the various emotions which have expressed
themselves in movements of slackness, agitation, energy, or confusion;
it matters not through what circumstances our vigour may have leaked
away, our nerves have been harrowed, our attention worn out, so long
as those movements, those agitations, slackenings, oppressions,
reliefs, fatigues, harrowings, and reposings are actually taking place
within us. In briefer phrase, while painting and sculpture present us
only with objects possibly connected with emotions, but probably
connected with emotions too often varied to affect us strongly; music
gives us the actual bodily consciousness of emotion; nay (in so far as
it calls for easy or difficult acts of perception), the actual mental
reality of comfort or discomfort.

XIV.

The emotion uppermost in the music of all these old people is the
specific emotion of the beautiful; the emotional possibilities, latent
in so many elements of the musical structure, never do more than
qualify the overwhelming impression due to that structure itself. The
music of Handel and Bach is beautiful, with a touch of awe; that of
Gluck, with a tinge of sadness; Mozart's and his contemporaries' is
beautiful, with a reminiscence of all tender and happy emotions; then
again, there are the great Italians of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, Carissimi, Scarlatti the elder, Marcello, whose musical
beauty is oddly emphasised with energy and sternness, due to their
powerful, simple rhythms and straightforward wide intervals. But
whatever the emotional qualification, the chief, the never varying,
all-important characteristic, is the beauty; the dominant emotion is
the serene happiness which beauty gives: happiness, strong and
delicate; increase of our vitality; evocation of all cognate beauty,
physical and moral, bringing back to our consciousness all that which
is at once wholesome and rare. For beauty such as this is both
desirable and, in a sense, far-fetched; it comes naturally to us, and
we meet it half-way; but it does not come often enough.

Hence it is that the music of these masters never admits us into the
presence of such feelings as either were better not felt, or at all
events, n