Martin Luther, himself a musical composer and performer of merit,
paused in his great work of religious reform to declare, "I verily
think, and am not ashamed to say, that, next to divinity, no art is
comparable to music." And Disraeli utters this noble thought: "Were it
not for music, we might in these days say the beautiful is dead."

"Touching musical harmony, whether by instrument or by
voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a
proportionable disposition, such, notwithstanding, is the
force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that part
of man which is most divine, that some have thereby been
induced to think that the soul itself is or hath in it
harmony: a thing which delighteth all ages, and beseemeth
all states; a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as
decent being added unto actions of greatest weight and
solemnity as being used when men most sequester themselves
from action. The reason hereof is an admirable facility
which music hath to express and represent to the mind, more
inwardly than any other sensible means, the very steps and
inflections of every way, the turns and varieties of all
passion whereunto the mind is subject."[1]

"I would fain know what music is. I seek it as a man seeks
eternal wisdom. Yesterday evening I walked, late in the
moonlight, in the beautiful avenue of lime-trees on the bank
of the Rhine; and I heard a tapping noise and soft singing.
At the door of a cottage, under the blooming lime-tree, sat
a mother and her twin-babies: the one lay at her breast, the
other in a cradle, which she rocked with her foot, keeping
time to her singing. In the very germ, then, when the first
trace of life begins to stir, music is the nurse of the
soul: it murmurs in the ear, and the child sleeps; the tones
are the companions of his dreams; they are the world in
which he lives. He has nothing; the babe, although cradled
in his mother's arms, is alone in the spirit: but tones find
entrance into the half-conscious soul, and nourish it as
earth nourishes the life of plants."[2]

[Footnote 1: Hooker.]

[Footnote 2: Bertini.]

II.

THE MUSIC OF NATURE.

"The lark sings loud, and the throstle's song
Is heard from the depths of the hawthorn dale;
And the rush of the streamlet the vales among
Doth blend