hearted, had not the scale been suddenly turned in his favour by the fact, that his most particular and intimate friend had resolved to write a defence of him in another literary journal. This at once decided the point of qualification. In other instances the society may seem to act with less caution, though such is not in reality the case. A young gentleman claimed to be admitted as a miserable wretch, on the score of having, in a moment of warm-hearted enthusiasm, lent a much-esteemed college chum his acceptance for an amount nearly equal to all he was worth in the world. The bill had not become due, but the gentleman was at once electedthe misery being taken for granted, and the ruin voted inevitable. The Inconsolables have a club-room, open at all hours, the walls of which would present to the view, were there a little more light, sketches of the most celebrated prisons, hospitals, churchyards, and lunatic asylums of the country-all executed by the Messrs. Grieve. "More doleful sight did never eye survey." Were you to follow two gentlemen in, after a summer-morning saunter through this melancholy metropolis, you would probably find them sinking upon a seat in a snug, silent, dreary nook, resting their wretched. elbows upon the unfeeling table, and their care-worn cheeks upon their uncomfortable hands-and ordering, for purposes of refreshment, clean cambric handkerchiefs for two. You would find in the opposite corner a woe-begone personage retailing to a companion, with many sighs, all the jokes out of the new farce, with the view of throwing a fresh damp upon his spirits. Others would be reading newspapers for the same purpose, and, judging from the countenance, with considerable success; the parliamentary reports especially would appear to be taken with inestimable advantage to the objects of the reader. (The publications adopted by the Club as encouragers, directly or indirectly, of its purposes are numerous; but the "N. M. M. and H." is of course excluded as eminently mischievous.) It is a noticeable fact, that the majority of the miserables who form the society were in other days more or less famous upon town as desperate punsters, jovial blades, practical jokers, and inveterate wags. The burthen of their morning and evening song was “Oh, there's nothing in life can sadden us !” The transition from the incorrigible to the inconsolable, from the sublimely droll to the ridiculously dreary, is but a step-and it is often taken. Then, seven days were too few for the week's holiday; now, the only objection they have to the measure for making dark and doleful the seventh day is, that its beneficent provisions do not extend to the other six. But the change suits them, and they would no more be gay now than they would have been grave of old. Each lays claim to a supremacy of sorrow, and to each the pleasing couplet applies"If ever man to misery was born, 'Tis mine to suffer, and 'tis mine to mourn." Their misery is the keener, because, like treason, it has done its worst; the cup can but overflow, and this conviction doubles the bitterness of their draught. So may they sing still, in a different sense, but with an infinitely deeper assurance of a faithful fulfilment than they had before -so may they sing still, "Oh, there's nothing in life can sadden us !" A SPECIAL EVENING IN THE LIFE OF A MUSICAL AMATEUR. "Oh, that record is lively in my soul !"-SHAKSPEARE. "You don't make it speak!" was the provoking exclamation of my dry old German music-master, after I had scraped on my fiddle for a long half-hour, producing enough of noise, at least, to have frighted from their comfortable propriety the lares and penates of my private apart"You don't make it speak!" had been objected by the caustic German, with his eager whine, after each pause in the successless efforts of my bow-arm. ment. Now, of the mortifying fact thus insisted on, no one could be more conscious than myself, since vanity was never my forte, nor, had it been such, was there here any decent pretence for its exercise. To be candid; if my bowing was unparalleled, it was only so by reason of its not fulfilling the required condition of running even with the bridge; and, in short, it would have needed Malvolio himself to construe into anything like a speaking excellence the degree of power that I had as yet acquired over "the instrument of adagios." I felt, indeed, that I could make it cry, and this in tones hardly to be outdone by the most determined infant, when angry with a long day's angor ventris; but beyond this I did not flatter myself to bave attained, nor did I expect to do so, save by a very tardy rate of advancement. Thus the dictum of my German, in its recurring iterations, seemed wholly unnecessary. Again I screwed up my pegs and my courage, however, and made pretty hard work of a prelude in some easy key. "You don't make it speak!” was the only sequel from the lips of my preceptor. What could he mean? Why this never-changing phrase, which, at each repetition, with all its identity, opened a fresh jar of annoyance for my feelings? Was it enthusiasm, or was it dulness, that occasioned the use of this peculiar expression? Was it, by any possibility, some deep, pervading, and poetic sense of what the violin, made vocal in the hand of genius, could achieve, -a sense of its power to "Speak, without words, such words as none can tell”— or was it the reverse quality of sheer dulness-the positive incapacity to bring forward any other idea, upon the matter in hand, save what was involved in this much-tormented phrase? As I drew, with wearied arm, towards the end of my profitless lesson, I arrived at a conclusion in favour of the latter of these two conjectures. My German, like the Frenchman once in England, who imagined a certain brief form of oath to constitute le fond de la langue, seemed to rest for everything upon the one phrase, and to make it stand (along with a few expletive shrugs, hum's and ha's, and pinches of snuff) for his alpha and omega-his whole code of instruction. He was a member of a military band, who had been somehow recommended to me as a competent fiddler, although his proper instrument was of the wind. Like certain sauces, known to those who read advertisements, he had assumed an applicability to "general purposes ;" and, as I afterwards learned, was ready at any time to teach anything (in the musical world) for which anybody would pay him. The compendious remark which he had multiplied so many times upon me, was doubtless a kind of cover for the baldness of his knowledge. In his fiddling capacity, he was a musical Morison, who had but one prescription. It was my first lesson from this artist; and, as all succeeding ones promised to be merely a succession of firsts, I determined that it should be likewise my last. Accordingly, after transferring a crown to him, I dismissed him, snuffbox and all, to play Sir Oracle with his five words to any other student he might find; and, as I felt not a little worried at the changeless inculcation of a so painful truth, as well as fatigued with the labour performed under its depressing influence, I threw myself with abandonment into my arm-chair, and sought the meditative composure so often to be attained in that situation. The words of my departed preceptor continued here to haunt me. "You don't make it speak!" tingled yet in my ears, vibrated in my memory, and presently usurped the direction of my thoughts. The coy nature of those exquisite charms which belong to the violin-the long assiduities exacted as the preface to their surrender, even where the solicitant has the finest natural gifts to recommend him-the patience and catgut to be worn out,-the finger-aches and mind-aches to be endured, ere the "leading instrument can be made to discourse its most eloquent music,-these considerations were vividly present to me. How few, how very few (thought I) have ever been able to make it speak! But then, what raptures consummate have lived in that voice, when once its utterance could be called forth! Oh, how transcendant are the best powers of the violin ! The room was quiet-the more so for the kettle's lulling hum, and the gentle purr of the sleek and somnolent cat; the fire shed a genial warmth; and the brandy-and-water, which I had somehow mixed with my meditations, presented in its fumes the clouds for my imagination to luxuriate in. Amid the train of my reflections, I glided off insensibly into slumber. * Methought I stood upon a mossy bank, of emerald brightness-a broad stream floating majestically by, amid a landscape sweetly and temperately lighted by a setting sun. The distance on either side the river was crowned by daisied hills, and made the place wherein I stood the loveliest of valleys. The scene around was deeply still, as if in expectation of a coming wonder-of some great impending presence. The most delicious perfumes, such as fascinate the senses, and give play to the fancy, diffused their fragrance; and there floated forward an azure cloud, which, staying its progress near the part of the bank where I was stationed, suddenly expanded, and made manifest to my enchanted view a figure full of combined beauty and majesty, glorious after the manner of the ancients. Of drapery it had little-and well, indeed, might such a form be disdainful of apparel-but golden sandals clasped the feet, and a wreath of laurel, intensely virid, inclosed in a tributary parenthesis the auburn splendours of the head. I was conscious that it was the Cynthian Apollo who beamed before me! But what eccentric attribute did either hand hold in display? Could it be an arrow, in the right? On the contrary, it was a bow; not, however, the bow that sent death to the Pythian serpent, and made Niobe all tears; not the bow of one string, but the bow of a hundred, the bow of newer ages,― the bow of the violin. And there, grasped in the other hand of the "præsens divus," was its kindred creation, its fond, inseparable companion and better half, the fiddle itself. The apparition altogether was so singular, that I could not omit to notice even the minutest of its accessories. I observed that the violin was of the Amati pattern; but that the silver string, which, as usual, formed the fourth parallel of longitude upon it, had for its associates no mere bits of catgut, but a substance brighter and clearer, which seemed like threads of crystal endued with pliancy. The pegs were of gold; a topaz gleamed from each side of the scroll; and, by way of button for the attachment of the tail-piece, there flamed a carbuncle. Apollo looked benignly on this memorable instrument-turned it over several times curiously-and then pacing slowly and thoughtfully up and down the green sward, seemed as if meditating music for its employment. But, ah! what shapes are these-an airy nymph, and the semblance of a strange old man-that suddenly enter upon the scene? The one glides forward from the brown depths of a wood in the opposite distance, while the other has emerged from the bed of the river. The first is Echo,-in describing whom I shall not be more particular than to signify at once that she was a very pale young person, with a most reflective cast of countenance; the prettiest of imaginable double chins; a striped, or reverberated dress of transparent texture; a tippet of parrot's feathers; a hoop petticoat, and a hollow voice. As she approached, she waved in her hand a sunflower, probably in compliment to the deity of day. As for the masculine figure, his appearance, as he came floundering out of the water, was equally grotesque and significant. Old and full of days, he was distinguished by a remarkably wide mouth, funny eyes, a painted beard, shaped something like the half of a wherry, wooden shoes, made like boats, and a certain general look of craft. Moreover, his coating was of thick mud, of the richest description; green osiery encased his legs; and silver eels, voluminous, played at scratch-cradle around his head, the hair of which looked amazingly like a bundle of rushes, and glistened with a dripping ooze, of a lubricity beyond all pomatum. I was convinced, by intuition, that this individual could be no other than the genius loci, Father Thames. The very air was informed of his presence, for, in his immediate vicinity, it had" an ancient and fish-like smell." But list! what sounds are those, so sweet, and so unearthly? They seem the emotions of some celestial heart, made audible, articulate! Is it music is it speech? 'Tis more thrilling than the tones that gush from woman's lips in passion's wildest hour. Whence-whence? Is it Apollo enunciating his oracles? No; his mouth makes no utterance; his features are as serene and composed in the glow of their lumen purpureum, as the glassy surface of a lake o'er which a rainbow smiles. But there-there-the violin ;-he draws the breath of life from its strings; its soul is summoned forth at his touch; it is eloquent, it is vocal, beneath the pressure of that hand divine! Apollo makes it speak! As soon as the astonishment became less tumultuous within me, I was made sensible that a kind of prelude of interjections, and of brief but lofty rhapsodies, of which I could not exactly catch the purport, was what constituted the first part of the fiddle's utterings in the hands of Phoebus. A short pause succeeded, during which a sneeze from Father Thames (who appeared to be labouring under a recently caught cold) lowered in a slight degree the tone of my emotions, but did not abate the intensity of my purpose to drink in at the ear all that might follow from the same superlative source. Echo in the mean while had made various signs of delight. Through some preternatural extension of the optic powers, I found myself capable of discerning the whole play of her features, though the width of the river divided us. She now advanced more closely to the verge of the opposite bank, and stood collected, as if prepared to do something in her vocation. She seemed evidently on the watch to be a repeater. Apollo, now less abstracted, gave her, for the first time, a nod of gracious recognition, and directed also a smile towards Father Thames, who was at the moment shaking his head and eels in another sneeze, but appeared, in spite of his inconvenience, to be much interested in what was going forward. Again the radiant Phoebus raised his bow. Awhile he coquetted with the favoured fiddle right gracefully, and then, planting it on his chest, he soliloquized aloud upon it in the peculiar manner about to be related-the nymph Echo occasionally superadding her voice to that of the violin, and for the most part calling names, in the most extraordinary way, yet with an appropriateness that could not be too much admired. The strain now discoursed was less of the passionate order than what had preceded, but more coherent. It was a mixture of the sentimental and the familiar (including a dash of the didactic), in a kind of declamation upon the merits and glories of the "leading instrument ;" and I was fortunately enabled to catch its terms distinctly, such as I am somehow to pen them down at the bidding of a full-charged memory. Thus, then, spoke Apollo, through the means and expressive agency of the violin, which, with all the charms of tone pertaining to its own class, was somehow combining, in mystic union, those which are diffused from the most delicious human voice: Deeply as I've loved the lyre, Nor the tones of clangorous trumpet, Which not soothe the ear, but thump it. Press'd by hand, caress'd by chin, 'Tis a thing all ears to win; Of the world, from ends to middle, Though it changes to the real July.-VOL. L. NO. CXCIX. (ECHO) Violin! (ECHO) Fiddle ! (ECHO) Bow ideal! |