he organic world, seem to appeal to the subtlest fibres of our nature;
they go to the very depths of the heart. When I spoke of the gloomy hue,
and the coldness of the tones in the introduction to _Mose_, was I
not fully as much justified as your critics are when they speak of the
'color' in a writer's language? Do you not acknowledge that there is a
nervous style, a pallid style, a lively, and a highly-colored style? Art
can paint with words, sounds, colors, lines, form; the means are many;
the result is one.

"An Italian architect might give us the same sensation that is produced
in us by the introduction to _Mose_, by constructing a walk through
dark, damp avenues of tall, thick trees, and bringing us out suddenly
in a valley full of streams, flowers, and mills, and basking in the
sunshine. In their greatest moments the arts are but the expression of
the grand scenes of nature.

"I am not learned enough to enlarge on the philosophy of music; go and
talk to Capraja; you will be amazed at what he can tell you. He will say
that every instrument that depends on the touch or breath of man for its
expression and length of note, is superior as a vehicle of expression
to color, which remains fixed, or speech, which has its limits. The
language of music is infinite; it includes everything; it can express
all things.

"Now do you see wherein lies the pre-eminence of the work you have just
heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of music:
one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a hundred or
so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a more or less
agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We listen to
their strains, their would-be melodies, with more or less satisfaction,
but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end of the century
they are forgotten. But the nations, from the beginning of time till
our own day, have cherished as a precious treasure certain strains which
epitomize their instincts and habits; I might almost say their history.
Listen to one of these primitive tones,--the Gregorian chant,
for instance, is, in sacred song, the inheritance of the earliest
peoples,--and you will lose yourself in deep dreaming. Strange and
immense conceptions will unfold within you, in spite of the extreme
simplicity of these rudimentary relics. And once or twice in a
century--not oftener, there arises a Homer of music, to whom God grants
the gift of being ahead