united souls desire to be truly each other, which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction. - This noble affection falls not on vulgar and common constitutions, but on such as are marked for virtue; he that can love his friend with this noble ardour, will in a competent degree affect all. Now if we can bring our affections to look beyond the body, and cast an eye upon the soul, we have found out the true object, not only of friendship but charity; and the greatest happiness that we can bequeath the soul, is that wherein we all do place our last felicity, salvation; which though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and pious invocations to desire, if not procure and further. I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my friends, nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never hear the toll of a passing bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit: I cannot go to cure the body of my patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for his soul; I

cannot see one say his prayers, but, instead of imitating him, I fall into a supplication for him, who, perhaps, is no more to me than a common nature and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications, there are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessings of mine unknown devotions."

A clear perception of, and a love for, whatever is good and beautiful, and, consequently, harmonious, in nature and in art, seems a necessary basis for the superstructure of those feelings which constitute, under the appellations of charity, love, and friendship, what may be termed, the music of the human heart. To this refined sense of moral and intellectual rhythm, which approximates man to the nature of the Divinity, and which induced Plato, when attempting a definition of the soul, to term it an harmony, the author of Religio Medici, has alluded in the following highly eloquent and impressive manner.

"It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an

instrument. For there is a music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres for those well-ordered motions and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads, which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it; for, it strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer; there is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God, such a melody to the ear, as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God."

Ideas similar to those which are contained in this noble passage in relation to the Platonie doctrine of the harmony of the spheres, and of

the intellectual music of the soul, have been entertained by some of our best poets and divines. Thus, Spenser, alluding, like our author at the commencement of the above quotation, to the sense of harmony which arises from the contemplation of beauty and the emotions of a pure affection, says, that

Love is a celestiall harmonie

Of likely hearts, composed of starres concent*:

and Milton, who was a warm admirer of the Platonic theories, has, in his lines At a solemn Musick, thus spoken of the intellectual melody which Browne tells us, is for ever sounding in the ears of God.

That undisturbed song of pure concent,
Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne,
TO HIM that sits thereon.

In the Paradise Lost, he has again, and still more beautifully, alluded to the same doctrine;

* Hymns in Honour of Beautie.

where, speaking of the planets, he observes, that

In their motions, harmony itself

So smooths her charming tones, that God's own ear Listens delighted*:

which is precisely the diapason of the spheres to which Plato represents the Deity as listening. Ἐκ πασῶν δὲ ὀκτὼ ἐσῶν ΜΙΑΝ ΑΡΜONIAN ΣΥΜΦΩΝΕΙΝ. †

The idea of this harmony, as resulting from order and proportion, being inherent in the human soul, but imperceptible to ears of flesh and blood, is finely brought out in the following lines from Shakspeare.

Look, how the floor of Heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb, which thou beholdst,
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. ‡

+ De Republ. lib. x.

* Book V. v. 625.
Merchant of Venice, Act 5.