a
graceful, poetic melody. The sounds passed away rapidily like sparks,
then were extinguished for a moment. A ferocious violence animated the
last measures, and the gypsies laid down their bows. But, divining a
sympathetic listener, they recommenced and played on till the night was
far advanced. At length they ceased, and Franz left the camp, carrying
with him the revelation of a hitherto unknown art.

Three principal features (he tells us) determine the character of
Tzigany music--its intervals, not used in European harmony, its peculiar
rhythms, and its Oriental fioritures or grace-notes. In the minor scale
the Tziganys take the fourth augmented, the sixth diminished and the
seventh augmented. It is by the frequent augmentation of the fourth that
the harmony acquires a wonderfully audacious and disquieting character.
The educated musician at first thinks he hears false notes, but the law
of their harmonies is to have no law. Their abundance is incalculable,
and the solemn and intoxicating effects resulting from the rapid and
beautiful transitions cannot be imagined. As for the grace-notes, they
give to the ear a pleasure like that which Moorish architecture gives to
the eye: the architects of the Alhambra painted on each of their bricks
a graceful little poem; the gypsies adorn each note with melodious
designs and luxuriant embroideries. But (we quote M. Franz throughout)
who shall describe the impalpable flame of Tzigany sentiment, the
strange, subjugating charm of which is a vital animation almost adequate
to life itself? or the mysterious equilibrium which reigns in this
undisciplined art between the sentiment and the form? Mystery of genius,
which bears in itself its inexplicable power of emotion, and which
science and taste in vain deny!

When Franz again heard Tzigany music it was under very different
circumstances. A fete was given by a Hungarian gentleman, of which this
music was to be one of the attractions, the most distinguished
performers being Farkas Miska and Remenyi Ede. The arrival of the latter
on the morning after the first evening concert (the fete seems to have
lasted some days) was announced to M. Franz by a great noise, a banging
of doors and windows and moving of furniture in the room next his own.
It at length ceased, and he was just getting to sleep again when some
one knocked at his door, and a pretty, fair-haired boy entered, who
announced himself as Ptolemyi Nandor, the fervent disciple