Only sometimes the thorough-bass I contrive to guess at. from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like relation of obscurity to me; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as Baralipton. It is hard to stand alone in an age like this, (ccn stituted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut,) to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an art, which is said to have such an especial stroke at soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. Yet, rather than break the candid current of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have received a great deal more pain than pleasure from this so cried-up faculty.

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. The ear is passive to those single strokes; willingly enduring stripes while it hath no task to con. To music it cannot be passive. It will strive mine at least will 'spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze; like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds, which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment

of endless, fruitless, barren attention! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life sounds; and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise.

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience!) immovable, or affecting some faint emotion till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this,) I have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoyment; or like that

Party in a parlor

All silent, and all DAMNED.

Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, as they are called, do plague and imbitter my apprehension. Words are something; but to be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds; to be long a-dying; to lie stretched upon a rack of roses; to keep up languor by unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter; to invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime, these are faint shadows of what I have undergone from a series of the ablest executed pieces. of this empty instrumental music.

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have

experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable ;--
afterwards followeth the languor and the oppression.
-Like that disappointing book in Patmos; or like
the comings on of melancholy, described by Burton,
doth music make her first insinuating approaches
"Most pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given
to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and
water, by some brook side, and to meditate upon some
delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect
him most, amabilis insania, and mentis gratissimus
error. A most incomparable delight to build castles in
the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite
variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly
imagine they act, or that they see done. So delight-
some these toys at first, they could spend whole days
and nights without sleep, even whole years in such
contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are
like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn from
them, winding and unwinding themselves as so many
clocks, and still pleasing their humors, until at the
last the SCENE TURNS UPON A SUDDEN, and they being
now habituated to such meditations and solitary places,
can endure no company, can think of nothing but
harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion,
subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of
life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of
nothing else; continually suspecting, no sooner are
their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy
seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing
some dismal object to their minds; which now, by no
means, no labor, no persuasions, they can avoid, they
cannot be rid of, they cannot resist."

Something like this "SCENE TURNING
SCENE TURNING " I have ex

perienced at the evening parties, at the house of ny good Catholic friend Nov; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his weekdays into Sundays, and these latter into minor heavens.*

When my friend commences upon one of those solemn anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless ear, rambling in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some five-and-thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion into my young apprehension (whether it be that, in which the Psalmist, weary of the persecutions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings or that other, which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind) -a holy calm pervadeth me. I am for the

time

rapt above earth,

And possess joys not promised at my birth.

But when this master of the spell, not content to have laid his soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive,

impatient to overcome her 66 "earthly" with his "heavenly," still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, above which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant Tritons, Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps, — I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and * I have been there, and still would go;

'Tis like a little heaven below. - Dr. Watts.

fro at my wits' end; clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me priests, altars, censers, dazzle before mo -the genius of his religion hath me in her toils-a shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous - he is Pope, and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too, -tri-coroneted like himself!-I am converted, and yet a Protestant; at once malleus hereticorum, and myself grand heresiarch: or three heresies centre in my person: I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus - Gog and Magog what not? till the coming in of the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer faith; and restores to me the genuine unterrifying aspects of my pleasant-countenanced host and hostess.

ALL FOOLS' DAY.

THE compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first of April to us all!

Many happy returns of this day to you and you— and you, Sir -nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon the matter. Do not we know one another? what need of ceremony among friends? we have all a touch of that same you understand me a speck of the motley. Beshrew the man who on such a day as this, the general festival, should affect to stand aloof.