Treatise upon the Office and Duty of Grand Jurors. By Daniel Davis, Solicitor General of Massachusetts.

By Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston-A Discourse on the Philosophy of Analogy, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of RhodeIsland, Sept. 7, 1831. By Francis Wayland, D. D. President of Brown University.-Elements of Algebra, by Bourdon, translated from the French, for the use of Schools and Colleges, by John Farrar, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, in Harvard University.-Reports of Cases argued and determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, vol. 9. By Octavius Pickering, Counsellor at Law.

By Munroe & Francis, Boston-The American Girl's Book, or Occupation for Leisure Hours. By Miss Leslie. Containing a great variety of amusements for the play hours of Girls, and directions for making all kinds of Fancy Articles for the Toilet and Work Table. -A Letter to a Fashionable Lady. By a Physician. On the importance of Female Health, and the means of preserving it.

By Andrew J. Allen, Boston-The Massachusetts Almanac, or the Merchant's and Farmer's Calendar for 1832, which contains a large number of useful remarks and events, Morning and Evening Tide Table, Sun's Declinations, the Courts, Census, Interest Table, List of the Public Buildings in Boston and New-York. The Astronomical Calculations are by R. T. Paine, Esq.

By Stimpson & Clapp, Boston-The Annual Retrospect of Public Affairs, for 1831. Vol. 2.

By Hilliard & Brown, Cambridge-A Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Harvard University, for the academical year of 1831-2. To which is affixed, the Terms of Admission, Course of Instruction, Account of the Divinity School, Account of the Law School, Course of Study in the Law School, Statutes of the Medical School, Account of the Library, Expenses in College, &c. &c.-Inaugural Discourse delivered before the University in Cambridge, Mass.

Sept. 3, 1831. By Charles Follen, Professor of the German Language and Literature.

By J. & J. W. Prentiss, Keene, N. H.-The Literary and Scientific Class Book, embracing the leading facts and principles in Science, illustrated by engravings. Selected from the best sources, and adapted to the wants and condition of youth in the United States. With Questions. By Rev. Levi W. Leonard.-A Selection of Reading Lessons for Common Schools, designed to be used after Easy Lessons in Reading, American Popular Lessons, Boston Reading Lessons, and other works of a similar rank. 4th edition. By the author of the Literary and Scientific Class Book.

By J. & J. Harper, New-York-The King's Secret, by the author of the Lost Heir, in 2 vols. -Philip Augustus, or the Brothers in Arms, by the author of Richelieu, Darnley, &c., in 2 vols., being Nos. 9 and 10 of the Library of Select Novels.-Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative of his Shipwreck, and consequent Discovery of certain Islands in the Caribbean Sea; with a detail of many extraordinary and highly interesting events in his life, from the year 1733 to 1749, as written in his own diary. Edited by Miss Jane Porter.

By G. C. & H. Carvill, New-York-Remains of the Rev. Edmund D. Griffin, compiled by Francis Griffin, with a Biographical Memoir of the deceased, by the Rev. John McVickar, D. D., Professor of Moral Philosophy, &c., in Columbia College; 2 vols.-Sixty Years in the Life of Jeremy Levis. A novel, in 2 vols., 12 mo.

By Peabody &. Co., New York-A Treatise on Primitive or Secondary Disguised or Misplaced Fever, as a single disease; with the varieties, cause, and treatment, as it appears in most of the particular forms of Fever recognized by Nosologists. By M. E. Sawyer, M. D.

By Carey & Lea, Philadelphia-Introduction to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets. Designed principally for the use of young persons at School and College. By Henry N. Coleridge, Esq., M. A., late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Part 1.-The Atlantic Souvenir, for 1832.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Long and elaborate essays in the form of reviews, bearing the title of some new or popular work for a basis, are not embraced in the views and purposes of the editors of this Magazine. Its limits necessarily exclude them. Such articles correspond better with the size and objects of the quarterly reviews; and if we have departed from a general rule in filling up the pages of the present number, it has been done for reasons which appeared satisfactory, but which will not often occur, and which it is altogether unnecessary to explain.

We take this opportunity to remark, for the benefit of anonymous correspondents, that rejected contributions will be returned in such manner as they may direct; and those not returned, as ordered, within a proper time, may be considered as accepted. But we hold ourselves under no obligation to gratify the desires of such writers by giving an immediate insertion to their contributions, if not consistent with our own arrangements, nor to give reasons for rejecting such as we deem unsuitable for publication.

It may be proper to remark, also, for the information of the curious reader, that it is altogether incompatible with our notions of expediency to give the names of our contributors in connection with the articles furnished. If gentlemen who favor us with the products of their leisure, choose to inform their friends, or the public, of the extent and particulars of their claims to authorship, we, of course, can have no objection. We make this observation from having noticed in newspapers, and heard in conversation, certain articles very positively attributed to certain writers. Such designations have been in almost every instance erroneous-made without authority from the editors, and with little credit to the sagacity of the gossips who give them currency.

THE

NEW-ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER, 1831.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

MUSIC.

I GREATLY love, and I may say too, respect, the art of Music. It enters very largely, more largely than we are apt to think, into our enjoyments. From the highest to the lowest in the land, from the church to the cobbler's stall, from the theatre and the concert room to the sidewalk and the cellar, every where, and at all times, we hear the sound of music; and few sing but the happy. It is rare to meet with those who do not relish and understand this art, in some of its forms. We are all ready to acknowledge our obligations to it for many a pleasant hour. Yet there are not many who will allow it to be any thing more than the source of a momentary, perishing enjoyment—at most, and at best, a mere luxury, doing little in any condition of society to advance or secure its more valuable and permanent interests. To this opinion, however, I cannot assent. It seems to me to deserve a better praise. For my own part, I cannot but think that the cause of civilization, of intellectual progress and refinement, even of morals and religion itself, lie under serious obligations to the science and the art of music.

We may say of music, that, like poetry, its foundation is laid in the nature the Creator has given us. The earliest literature of a people is poetry; partly because poetry is the language of feeling and affection-and these sentiments possess the mind long before it learns to reason and compare-and partly because poetry, by the music of its cadences, serves as an important aid to the memory. But music is the instrument, by which poetry has, from the beginning, wrought its chief effect; it is the language which, even at the present day, it uses when it would make the deepest impression upon the heart. Wherever poetry has been found, there has music been found also, her inseparable companion. We cannot, therefore, as some have done, suppose the time ever to have been, when music was not; we cannot, with them, refer it, for its origin, to the imitation of the warbling of birds, or of the wind, sighing among the reeds by the river's side. Man, consti tuted as he now is, was never without music in his soul. He never, surely, wanted the organs for uttering melody. Can we with more pro

priety deny him a soul capable of those emotions which can find vent only, or best, in song? If he has ever had an eye to see the beauties of creation, a mind to comprehend them, a heart to feel, and a tongue to utter them, and this is poetry,—so has he ever had an ear tuned to catch all the harmony of sound which nature pours from a thousand sources, a heart to feel it, and organs capable of returning that harmony with the increased effect of nature's finest instrument, the human voice, and this is music.

And accordingly we find that there never has been a people without music. Among the rudest barbarians of the present day we hear of the war-song and the death-song. Our earliest notices of the earliest tribes of the earth, show that this divine art has always existed among men. We may refer, in proof of this assertion, as far back as to the remotest period of the Jewish record, even to Jubal, "the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ." Throughout the whole course of the Jewish history, we meet with those who were skillful to play upon divers instruments. The Psalms of David were sung to solemn chants, of correspondent excellence, we have a right to suppose, to the beauty and grandeur of the poetry whose sentiment they were to express. In Egypt, music found an early home; as the forms of musical instruments were there no other proof-painted upon her everlasting monuments in her undying pigments abundantly testify. The poems of Homer, we well know, were sung; and, doubtless, to melodies suited to the sentiment and the structure of the verse. Anacreon and Sappho sang their odes to the lyre. Pindar, it is said, sang himself to airs his own soul prompted, those magnificent odes which have immortalized him; and that in the poetic contests in which he engaged, he so often bore away the palm, is, perhaps, in part at least, to be ascribed to the related fact, that he excelled his competitors in the power, compass, and command of his voice.

We may hence with confidence maintain, that the first steps of the human race in the path of civilization and intellectual culture, are to be referred, as to other causes, so in part, to the power of music over the human soul. Who will believe that the ancient poetry which, before the invention of alphabetic writing, it was necessary to communicate orally, would have wroaght the wonders ascribed to it, had it been recited in the rigid style of declamation? It was music which imparted to it its popular power; its power to alarm, to agitate, to melt, to win. It was the Phrygian mode which roused the martial spirit of the fiery Macedonian, and soft Lydian measures, that soothed his soul to pleasures." Upon the philosopher in his retirement, poetry might, indeed, have had equal power, had it been simply rehearsed; or, after writing had become an art, when read from the leaves of the papyrus. But upon the rude and uncultivated populace, the choicest strains of the moral and descriptive poet would have died away in emptiness, had not melody won for them a way to the deepest recesses of the soul.

We arrive at the same conclusion when we look at the revival of music after the overthrow of the Western empire, and the weaving together of new nations out of the materials furnished by the breaking up of the Roman power, and the irruption of the Teutonic tribes. is from Provence we hear the first breathings of the poetic muse; but

It

they are borne to us upon the sounds of the harp. The Troubadour, either himself sang to his instrument the wild legends with which he entertained the knights and ladies of the Castle Hall; or he was attended by the Songleur who accompanied him with his harp and voice, Indeed, the path to poetic fame was entered at the gate of music. He who aspired to be a poet, first followed the Troubadour in quality of musician. Nor do we often hear, at that period, of poetry being offered to the world otherwise than through the medium of song. Even so late as the fifteenth century we find the celebrated Pulci singing-not reading or reciting-but singing, his Morgante Maggiore at the table of Lorenzo de Medici.

Let it not be thought that because I claim for music this close alliance with poetry, and contend that the poet has been, and is still, indebted to this art for much of his power over mankind, I would therefore crown it with an equal honor. It needs not exaggerated praise to give it a very enviable rank among polite arts and the undisputed sources of human improvement. No one, who thinks justly, can fail to assign to poetry the first place among those arts whose chief end is to please. No one, unless borne away by a mad enthusiasm, would dare to raise even Handel, Haydn or Mozart, to a level with Homer, Dante and Milton, or say that the sublime compositions of those remarkable men can be compared with the divine strains of these monarchs of the poetic art. But although we cheerfully yield to poetry this supreme excellence, it may not be so easy to determine to which of the other fine arts, sculpture, painting, architecture, music, shall be allowed precedence in the next degree. The most impartial might, perhaps, find it difficult to decide between the amount of intellectual pleasure derived from gazing upon the faultless proportions of the Pantheon, upon the beauties of the Venus or Apollo, upon the master-pieces of Raffaelle or Domenichino, or from listening to the choicest strains of Beethoven, Mozart, or Cimarosa. If from the union of music with poetry, its deep foundation in our very nature, and the part it has taken in the early refinement of our race, we feel warranted to regard it as something more and better than a mere luxury, a mere parlor ornament. we are strengthened in the conclusion when we view it in connexion with intellect and genius. Music, considered as a science, presents a study among the most subtle and profound with which the human mind is ever called to cope. In all its learned details, it tasks the most acute and philosophic mind to discover, arrange and define its principles. There are few, even of those who excel in the various departments of practice, who are competent to master the science of their art, or reach a thorough comprehension of its deep laid principles. And even considered as an art, music is an accomplishment, which, in its highest excellence, can never be dissociated in our mind, from truly exalted talent and a soul touched by the finest sensibilities. It implies and demands the exactest perceptions, the most rapid intellect, the nicest powers of discrimination, a rare union of judgement, taste and feeling, and that power of throwing the whole soul, as it were, into an instrument, or pouring it out in the voice, which is better denominated genius than anything else. Who will deny genius to Catalani, Malibran, or Paganini? And when we see united, in an individual, the knowledge of music as a science, a profound acquaintance with the

whole doctrine of harmony, the inventive mind which records upon immortal pages its original conceptions of melody and harmony, and that manual dexterity which wields the most difficult instrument with a perfect mastery, we are presented with an example of intellectual power, hardly surpassed in any other department of knowledge or art. Read an overture of Haydn or Mozart, or listen to it, simply as a study of human intellect, and you will confess that the mind which could invent those airs and harmonies, could, in each note, as it was written, calculate the precise effect of an orchestra of an hundred instruments, give to each its proper office, combine, interweave, separate and reunite them, so as to produce that matchless result by which you are entranced, is of the rarest order of human genius. Who can listen to the almost more than earthly strains of the Messiah, or the Creation, and not feel that the intellect which composed them would, under other circumstances, have controlled senates by the power of eloquence, stamped its immortality upon the canvass or the marble, or recorded its glowing thoughts in imperishable verse? Genius, as it has shone in music, is of a nature as ethereal and rare, as when it astonishes us in any other branch of learning or art; and it cannot be that nature will reproduce her Handels, her Haydns, her Mozarts, in greater profusion than her Homers, her Titians, or her Canovas.

When we see how much genius has been poured into modern music, that minds full of power, and hearts full of sensibility, have invented the melodies and the harmonies which delight us, how can it be otherwise than that this art should contain, within itself, the springs of an immense moral influence? I believe its influences are, for the most part, healthful and invigorating. History and observation combine to represent those as benefactors of a community, who introduce and cultivate a taste for this agreeable art. Its undoubted tendency is to soften, refine, and elevate. If, indeed, it be viewed only as it exists in the great theatrical establishments of the corrupt capitals of Europe, it may seem, and it may be, rather the pander of a debilitating luxury, than the minister of true refinement. Or, if it be considered only in the disastrous effects its practice has so often had upon the characters and habits of those who make music their profession, it may be thought an art that brings mischief rather than profit to a community. But, turning from at least so partial a view, look at this art as it contributes to the pure, quiet, fire-side enjoyments of almost every family throughout Europe and America, affording a rational and innocent relaxation after the severe labors of the day, withholding the young by its charms from many a pleasure and many a vice, to which ennui would otherwise impel them; look at it in its connexion with the rites and services of our holy religion, and you will be constrained to admit that, if it sometimes issues in evil, it exerts, in a much greater proportion, a pure, wholesome, saving influence. The tendency, the natural tendency of music, as of poetry, is to soften and refine. Who would not rather expect to meet with gentleness, urbanity, kindness of heart, and a certain general air of refinement and elegance, among the lovers and disciples of music, than the opposite traits of coarseness, rudeness, incivility, and cruelty? The world has ever been of this opinion, and facts show it to be well founded. The characteristic cruelty of the inhabitants of Cynæthæ, was attributed, by the Greek writers, to their neglect and contempt of