lves, or unfaithful and _de_formative. And this
distinction between the creatures who, blessing, are blessed, and
evermore _benedicti_, and the creatures who, cursing, are cursed, and
evermore _maledicti_, is one going through all humanity; antediluvian in
Cain and Abel, diluvian in Ham and Shem. And the question for the public
of any given period is not whether they are a constitutional or
unconstitutional vulgus, but whether they are a benignant or malignant
vulgus. So also, whether it is indeed the gods who have given any
gentleman the grace to despise the rabble, depends wholly on whether it
is indeed the rabble, or he, who are the malignant persons.

But yet again. This difference between the persons to whom Heaven,
according to Orpheus, has granted 'the hour of delight,'[178] and those
whom it has condemned to the hour of detestableness, being, as I have
just said, of all times and nations,--it is an interior and more
delicate difference which we are examining in the gift of _Christian_,
as distinguished from unchristian, song. Orpheus, Pindar, and Horace are
indeed distinct from the prosaic rabble, as the bird from the snake; but
between Orpheus and Palestrina, Horace and Sidney, there is another
division, and a new power of music and song given to the humanity which
has hope of the Resurrection.

_This_ is the root of all life and all rightness in Christian harmony,
whether of word or instrument; and so literally, that in precise manner
as this hope disappears, the power of song is taken away, and taken away
utterly. When the Christian falls back out of the bright hope of the
Resurrection, even the Orpheus song is forbidden him. Not to have known
the hope is blameless: one may sing, unknowing, as the swan, or
Philomela. But to have known and fall away from it, and to declare that
the human wishes, which are summed in that one--'Thy kingdom come'--are
vain! The Fates ordain there shall be no singing after that denial.

For observe this, and earnestly. The old Orphic song, with its dim hope
of yet once more Eurydice,--the Philomela song--granted after the cruel
silence,--the Halcyon song--with its fifteen days of peace, were all
sad, or joyful only in some vague vision of conquest over death. But the
Johnsonian vanity of wishes is on the whole satisfactory to
Johnson--accepted with gentlemanly resignation by Pope--triumphantly and
with bray of penny trumpets and blowing of steam-whistles, proclaimed
for the glor