dreary mountains echoed and re-echoed the unmusical blast of the Alpine cornet." *

Dr. Bushnell, of America, has finely expressed the same thought, from a similar circumstance. "It cannot be said that music is a human creation, and, as far as the substances of the world are concerned, a mere accident. As well can it be said. that man creates the colours of the prism, and that they are not in the properties of the light, because he shapes the prism by his own mechanical art. Or if still we doubt, if it seems incredible that the soul of music is in the heart of all created being, then the laws of harmony themselves shall answer, one string vibrating to another, when it is not struck itself, and uttering its voice of concord simply because the concord is in it, and it feels the pulses on the air to which it cannot be silent. Nay, the solid mountains and their giant masses of rock shall answer; catching, as they will, the bray of horns, or the stunning blast of cannon, rolling it across from one top to another in reverberating pulses, till it falls into bars of musical rhythm and chimes and cadences of silver melody. I have heard some fine music, as men are wont to speak, the play of orchestras, the anthems of choirs, the voices of song that moved admiring nations. But in the lofty passes of the Alps, I heard a music overhead from God's cloudy orchestra, the giant peaks of rock and ice, curtained in by the driven mist, and only dimly visible athwart the sky through its folds, such as

*"Wesleyan Magazine," 1854, p. 139.

mocks all sounds our lower worlds of art can ever hope to raise. I stood (excuse the simplicity) calling to them, in the loudest shouts I could raise, even till my power was spent, and listening in compulsory trance to their reply. I heard them roll it up through their cloudy worlds of snow, sifting out the harsh qualities that were teåring in it as demon screams of sin, holding on upon it as if it were a hymn they were fining to the ear of the great Creator, and sending it round and round in long reduplications of sweetness, minute after minute, till, finally, receding and rising, it trembled, as it were, among the quick gratulations of angels, and fell into the silence of the pure empyrean. I had never any conception before of what is meant by 'quality' in sound. There was more power upon the soul in one of those simple notes, than I ever expect to feel from anything called music below, or ever can feel till I hear them again in the choirs of the angelic world." *

We have already stated that association has much to do with sound, as well as with form and colour. Until a very recent period, when I heard some real Scotch pipers connected with a regiment of the line, I never could feel the sweetness of a bagpipe nor the power of its melody. Even now, I am persuaded that the charm consists very much in the historical associations. As the enlivening notes of the pibroch come over a Highlander, there are awakened memories of home of glen and mountain and brawling torrent, of gathering clans, battle, victory, * Dr. Bushnell's "Work and Play."

liberty, and proud ancestry, until the blood rushes quickly through his veins, and he rises into sympathy with the wild chivalry of his brave forefathers; or the tenderer strains recall the memories of the holy dead, and tears of gentle sensibility steal from his eyes.

It is said that in the Highlands of Scotland, where the ploughing is steep and difficult, and the poor horses have hard work to get along, it is customary to play the bagpipes, the charm of which urges them on in their heavy labour.

A touching incident, illustrative of the power of music, is furnished in the life of the venerable Moffat. He was in an African village where a white man had never been seen, and in the evening, when the full moon was shining down on many black faces, he was endeavouring to teach them the English alphabet, but found the task very difficult. Weary, and oppressed with continued speaking, and the memory of home coming over him-his dear old Scotland, he began to sing the letters a, b, c, etc., to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." The people were charmed, and they kept him at it for two hours; the next morning when he left his wagon, to his surprise and gladness, the boys were tending the calves, and the girls milking the cows to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." *

There is something sweet and cheering in the sounds of village bells, as they come over lea and water, and fall softly on the air.

*"Life of Robert Moffat," p. 157.

CHAPTER VI.

DIVINE BENEFICENCE IN THE ADAPTATION IN NATURE

IT

TO HUMAN PERCEPTION.

T has pleased our great and good Creator, not only to give us the power of perceiving beautiful objects, but He has, in the munificence of His bounty, spread throughout the universe many evidences of His desire to gratify our perceptions. The great world is full of God, not simply in the Pantheistic sense, nor in the mere æsthetic sense; but full of beautiful and sublime objects which demonstrate His personal existence, His beneficent presence, and all-potent goodness.

The Almighty has embodied His own conceptions of natural loveliness in the marvellous variety of nature. Dells, glades, woodland flowers, lowly mosses, graceful ferns, merry brooklets, bold rocks coated with many-coloured lichens, crested with heather, and vocal with silvery cascades, the grand mountains-the Alps and Andes and towering Himalayas-vast oceans, gorgeous sunsets, brilliant planets, gleaming over primeval forests and guiding the mariner over lonely seas, are so many aspects and forms in which the Divine Architect has expressed His sense of the beautiful and sublime. All these varieties bear marks of one Hand-of one vast presiding Intelligence; and they are all blended

F

into unity and harmony by one all-pervading law of gravitation-a law which, while it preserves the order of the solar system, rounds an infant's tear, and balances a crystal dew-drop on the petal of the most delicate flower.

And it is a pleasing thought, that the varieties of nature are adapted to the varieties of the human mind. The shady glen, with its rich foliage and melody of bird and stream, has its perfection of charms for a pure and pensive spirit like Cowper, the Christian Poet. The towering Alps, skirted with pines, tipped with snow, and vermillioned into richest glory by the rising sun, as if a great seraph with celestial torch had suddenly lit up their lofty crests, have their Alpine beauty and sublimity, and awaken deep and lofty thoughts and emotions in a soul formed for the grand as well as for the lovely, like that of Coleridge, whose genius gave marvellous expression of its strength and brilliance in the glorious hymn descriptive of Mont Blanc.

"The calm sublimity of a tropical night, when the stars shed their soft and planetary light over the gently heaving ocean," the wide unpeopled solitudes of deserts, the deep valleys of the Cordilleras, and the lofty palm-trees waving their picturesque leaves against the orient heavens, have their interest and attraction for such men as the noble Humboldt, the intrepid traveller and philosopher.

The vast plains and lakes of Africa, with the magnificent vegetation and teeming populations, have interest and magnetic power for such heroic men as Livingstone and Moffat, who have not only