is mind that they had no
reference to key, but solely to pitch, modified by duly-proportioned
magnitude and distance; he therefore set to work assiduously, got a
number of vases made, ascertained that they would give a resonance of
some kind, and had them disposed at proper intervals round the audience
part of the building. This being done, the party assembled, some as
audience, some as performers, to judge of the effect. The first burst of
choral music produced a resonance, like the sound produced by sea-shells
when placed against the ear, only many times multiplied, and growing
like the sound of a gong: it was the exaggerated concentration of the
symphony of a lime-grove full of cockchafers,{1} on a fine evening in
the early summer. The experiment was then tried with single voices: the
hum was less in itself, but greater in proportion. It was then tried
with speaking: the result was the same: a powerful and perpetual
hum, not resonant peculiarly to the diatessaron, the diapente, or the
diapason, but making a new variety of continuous fundamental bass.

1 The drone of the cockchafer, as he wheels by you in drowsy
hum, sounds his _corno di bassetto_ on F below the line.--
Gardiner's Music of Nature.

'I am satisfied,' said Lord Curryfin, 'the art of making these vases is
as hopelessly lost as that of making mummies.' Miss Niphet encouraged
him to persevere. She said:

'You have produced a decided resonance: the only thing is to subdue it,
which you may perhaps effect by diminishing the number and enlarging the
intervals of the vases.'

He determined to act on the suggestion, and she felt that, for some
little time at least, she had kept him out of mischief. But whenever
anything was said or sung in the theatre, it was necessary, for the
time, to remove the _echeia_.

CHAPTER XVIII

LECTURES--THE POWER OF PUBLIC OPINION--A NEW ORDER OF CHIVALRY

si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore jocisque
nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jorisqne.
HOR. Epist. I. vi 65, 66.

If, as Mimnennus held, nought else can move
Your soul to pleasure, live in sports and love.

The theatre was completed, and was found to be, without the _echeia_, a
fine vehicle of sound. It was tried, not only in the morning rehearsals,
but occasionally, and chiefly on afternoons of bad weather, by
recitations, and even lectures; for though some of the party attached no
value to that