of myth, the necessary result of the evolution of this highest
art.

Instrumental music, considered in itself, with the symphony as its
highest expression, has been declared by a learned writer to be the
grandest artistic creation, and the ultimate form of art in which the
vast cycle of all things human will find its development. A symphony is
an architectural construction of sounds, mobile in form, and not
absolutely devoid of a literary meaning. Yet we must not seek in
instrumental music for that which it cannot afford, such as the ideas
contained in words. Any one must admit the futility of the attempt to
give a dramatic interpretation or language to instrumental music, who
reads the description attempted by Lenz and other writers of some of
Beethoven's sonatas. Instrumental music does not lend itself to these
interpretations, since it is an art with an independent existence. We
have observed that in its first development it was used as an
accompaniment to the voice, or associated with the movements of the
body, or with the dance, and consequently had not the independence which
was gradually achieved, until it culminated in the symphony.
Instrumental music adds nothing to literature, nor to the expression of
ideas and sentiments, but in it pure music consists, and it is the very
essence of the art. Literature and poetry belong to a definite order of
ideas and emotions; music is only able to afford musical ideas and
sentiments. Instrumental music has its peculiar province as the supreme
art which composes its own poems by means of the order, succession, and
harmony of sounds; it delights, ravishes, and moves us by exciting the
emotional part of our nature, and thus arouses a world of ideas which
may be modified at pleasure, and which may, by the powerful means at its
disposal, produce effects of which instruments merely used for
accompanying the voice are incapable. When instrumental music was
released from all servitude to other arts, as well as from all positive
sense of religious emotions or mythical and symbolic prejudice, thought
was able to create the art of sounds, which contains in itself a special
aim and meaning.

We have thus reached the term of our arduous and fatiguing journey. We
flatter ourselves that a truth has been gleaned from it, and this
conviction is not, due to a presumptuous reliance on our powers, but on
the conscientious honesty of our researches, combined with a great yet
humble love of t