inding and unwinding themselves as so many clocks, and
still pleasing their humours, until at last the SCENE TURNS UPON A
SUDDEN, and they being now habitated to such meditations and solitary
places, can endure no company, can think of nothing but harsh and
distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, _subrusticus pudor_,
discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden,
and they can think of nothing else: continually suspecting, no sooner
are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on
them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to
their minds; which now, by no means, no labour, no persuasions they
can avoid, they cannot be rid of it, they cannot resist."

Something like this "SCENE-TURNING" I have experienced at the evening
parties, at the house of my good Catholic friend _Nov----_; who, by
the aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of players,
converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his week days into Sundays,
and these latter into minor heavens.[1]

When my friend commences upon one of those solemn anthems, which
peradventure struck upon my heedless ear, rambling in the side
aisles of the dim abbey, some five and thirty years since, waking
a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion into my young
apprehension--(whether it be _that_, in which the psalmist, weary of
the persecutions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings--or _that
other_, which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth
by what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind)--a holy calm
pervadeth me.--I am for the time

--rapt above earth,
And possess joys not promised at my birth.

But when this master of the spell, not content to have laid a soul
prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than lies in
her capacity to receive,--impatient to overcome her "earthly" with his
"heavenly,"--still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and
fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted _German_ ocean,
above which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those
Arions _Haydn_ and _Mozart_, with their attendant tritons, _Bach_,
_Beethoven_, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up
would but plunge me again in the deeps,--I stagger under the weight
of harmony, reeling to and fro at my wit's end;--clouds, as of
frankincense, oppress me--priests, altars, censers, dazzle before
me--the genius of _his_ religion hath