; and the pleasure we
derive from a fine voice, as distinguished from a fine piece or a fine
interpretation, is as wholly unartistic as that which we receive from a
ripe peach or a cool breeze: it is a purely sensuous pleasure, given us
ready-made by nature, to give or to perceive which requires no
mentality, in which there is no human intention, and consequently no
art. Now, the effect of the cry or of the imitation, and that of certain
other manifestations of sound, such as tone, pitch, volume, rhythm,
major or minor intervals, which are cognate with, but independent of,
the cry or the imitation--the effect of all this is an entirely sensuous
one, an effect of unintelligent matter on the nerves, not of calculating
intelligence on the mind, and it is to these physical effects, and not
to the mentally elaborated form, that music owes its peculiar power of
awaking or even of suggesting emotion.

That this is the case is shown by various circumstances. The ancients,
who, as is now proved beyond dispute, possessed very little of the
intellectual part of music, little of what we should deem its form,
enjoyed its emotional effects to a far higher degree than could we in
our present musical condition; the stories of Timotheus, Terpander, and
other similar ones, being at least founded on fact, as is evident from
the continual allusions of Greek writers to the moral or immoral effect
of the art, and their violent denunciations of people whose only social
crime was to have added a string to a lyre or a hole to a flute. We
ourselves have constant opportunities of remarking the intense emotional
effects due to mere pitch, tone, and rhythm; that is to say, to the
merely physical qualities of number, nature, and repetition of musical
vibrations. We have all been cheered by the trumpet and depressed by the
hautboy; we have felt a wistful melancholy steal over us while listening
to the drone of the bagpipe and the quaver of the flute of the pifferari
at the shrine; we have felt our heart beat and our breath halt on
catching the first notes of an organ as we lifted the entrance curtain
of some great cathedral; we have known nothing more utterly harrowing
than a hurdy-gurdy playing a cheerful tune, or a common accordion
singing out a waltz or a polka. Nay, it is worthy of remark that the
instruments capable of the greatest artistic development are just those
which possess least this power over the nerves: the whole violin and
harpsichor