. water, by attaching a plate of gold, of two or three inches surface, to some part of the ship, so as to be constantly plunged in the water. Half an ounce of gold laminated, he conceives would be sufficient for the purpose of ascertaining if it is amalgamated after a long voyage. Great Fall of the Barometer on the 25th of December, 1821.-As there is reason to believe, that the extraordinary fall of the barometer on the 25th of December, 1821, was connected with the volcanic eruption of Eyafjeld Jokkul, Iceland, it becomes interesting to collect the height of the barometer on that day in different parts of Europe : In, lines. Naes in Iceland, near Reikvig, 28.49 Eng. Dec. 26. Cambridge, 28.00 do. Dec. 25. Hanover, 28.34 do. Dec. 25. 1 P. M. Altona, 28.31 do. Dec. 25. 221 Udino, 25.5.1 French. Dec. 25. Morning. Bremen, 26.676 Dec. 25. 6h Stormy. St. Bernard, 19.10 Dec. 24. after Midn. Fougeres, 26.2.4 Dec. 24. gh Brest, 26.3 Dec. 24. Lyons, 25.9 Dec. 24. gh Jena, 26.3 Dec. 24, 25. Treves, 26.6 Dec. 25. 5h A. M. Augsburgh, 25.6.1 Dec. 25. 33 A. M. Leipsic, 26.68 Dec. 24, 25. a Toad found alive in the Centre of a Stone.--A specimen of a toad, which was taken alive from the centre of a mass of solid stone, has been sent to the College Museum of Edinburgh by Lord Duncan. Oil for Watch and Clock Work.-Good oil has long been a desideratum among watchmakers. Colonel Beaufoy remarks, that .if olive oil be exposed to the rays of the sun for a considerable length of time, it becomes colourless, limpid, free from mucilage, and not easily congealable. He exposed two eight-ounce phials, nearly filled with this oil, to the solar beams for one or two years, and found this effect produced. The bottles should be opened occasionally to allow the gas to escape, or the cork may be taken out. The following process by Chevreul has been recommended for freeing oil for watch-work from all acid and mucilage. Put into a matrass or glass-flask, a portion of any fine oil, with seven or eight times its weight of alcohol, and heat the mixture almost to boiling, decant the clear upper stratum of fluid, and suffer it to cool; a solid portion of fatty matter separates, which is to be removed, and then the alcoholic solution evaporated in a retort or basin, until reduced to one-fifth its bulk. The elaine or fluid part of the oil will be deposited. It should be colourless and tasteless, almost free from smell, without action on infusion of litmus, having the consistence of white olive oil, and not easily congealable. Size and Shape of the Globules of Blood in different Animals.-A number of very interesting results have recently been obtained by J. L. Prevost, M. D. and J. A. Dumas, respecting the form of the glo has so far been the bane of melody. The mathematical bas overrun the poetical. The mechanical has overlaid the intellectual. Nor is this to be wondered at. The thing is capable both of explanation and excuse. It is asserted somewhere by Rousseau, no mean judge of such matters, that the musical world may be divided into three classes: Those who are capable of feeling the intellectual part of music, who are generally men with something of a poetical temperament, and no very correct ear for harmony-Those who have an ear for harmony, and a taste for harmonious arrangement, but whose feelings are not excited by expressive melody, and who are, for the most part, men deficient in imagination; and, lastly, those who unite these two qualifications -a class, says Rousseau, rather rare. In this judgment of the celebrated citizen of Geneva, I must own that my limited observation, as far as it goes, strongly inclines me to concur. Now, if this idea be founded in truth, the consequent changes in the world of music are of natural occurrence: nor is it easy to conceive how they could have been materially different. Before the discovery of counterpoint and of the present accurate system of musical notation, the science (if science it could be called) of music was limited to the composition and repetition of a few simple airs. The harmonies, when harmony was attempted, were mean and monotonous, and the composer or performer possessed_little means and less inclination to improve this branch of his art. Indeed, if the date of many of the finest old airs be as modern as some contend, the indifference of the bards who composed them, to harmonious accompaniment, is almost incredible. They must of necessity have been aware of the improved arrangement of harmonies, and of the passion for that arrangement, which had then been spread, chiefly by the ministers of religion, over all Europe. Yet so little have the minds of the poets, who conceived those melodies, condescended to invest themselves in the trammels of science, that of those exquisite remains, there are few which do not violate some of the rules of composition, and scarcely any which, without injury to the melody, admit of a moderately full or scientific accompaniment. Be this, however, as it may, it is clear enough that the number of the individuals who lived either by the composition or performance of those airs, could not have been great, and in all likelihood was small. The whole of the known music about that period would, perhaps, not equal in bulk the thousandth part of the composition of the last ten years; and probably not one of the composers was the author of as many of those imperishable melodies as would fill a modern folio second page. The religious music of the ages prior to the invention of counterpoint, would seem to have been very deficient. It was necessarily simple; and where all passions save that of devotion were forbidden, melody naturally became either monotonous or unimpassioned; at last, probably both. In this state of things, counterpoint and the phrenzy for complete harmony, which to this hour is only subsiding, effected a radical and total change. A new order of men, that is to say, Rousseau's second class, became, from their numbers, and from the endless variety of which the description of music they cultivated is susceptible, the Lords of the Ascendant. The power of employing a multiplicity of voices and of instruments in chapels and cathedrals, was immediately turned to account. The church was omnipotent; and the “Maestro di Capella” was only another name for the best musician in the place. The expressive but simple airs of the obscure bards, who in all countries have composed what is called “national melody," were at once buried under an avalanche of motets, canons, masses, requiems, anthems, hymns, psalms, and choruses. To these were quickly added fugues, symphonies, sonatas, duetts, quartetts, quintetts, and all the varieties of what has been called “Chamber-music.” It is a mistake to imagine that the complication of harmony has been a taste gradually acquired. It was a phrenzy sudden and irresistible, both from it's novelty and from the real effects it is capable of producing. Those with the truest feeling of musical expression were naturally more or less captivated, like others, by the excitement of harmonious accompaniment. Those whose feelings were in the ear alone, rushed forward to claim pre-eminence for the elaborate and injurious additions which excited with such effect their grosser sensations. Science too was formally enlisted in the service; and mathematicians, with neither ear nor feeling, eagerly caught at consequence in a department where they had never dreamed of shining. The elegantly-turned sentiment of Heinsius, “ Harmoniæ pater est numerus," was carried to its full extent. Some of the wonderfully elaborate movements of the early harmonists show the extremes to which this inania carried them. Doubtless these harmonies were crude and harsh, and often barbarous, and later science has done much in sweetening their discordant chords, and refining their awkward modulations. Still as the knowledge of harmonies has extended, it is undeniable that harmonious composition has, upon the whole, been simplified. Hasse, Vinci, and Sebastian Bach, and then Handel, began to improve and polish the melody so neglected by their predecessors; and, as Dr. Burney expresses it, to “thin the accompaniments” that, like untrimmed underwood, choked up and smothered what they were meant to adorn. We have heard many complaints of the modern rage for musical accomplishment. Men of more refined taste have joined Mr. Cobbett in vituperating that indiscriminating thirst for sound, which would send honest farmers' daughters “to make a villainous noise on the piano." But this is comparatively nothing to the extent to which musical education was carried during the reigns of Elizabeth and James. The class through which it was possible to extend it was of course, at that period, much smaller than at present. But where it did form any part of education, and it did so of that of every gentleman, it seems to have been pushed to a great extreme. Few persons of a certain rank were then to be found who could not play, and with superior execution, on at least one instrument; and, where nature permitted, take a part in vocal compositions; the awkward and forced complexities of which, certainly did not tend to diminish their difficulty, however they might detract from their real merit. This fever of harmonies had subsided in England, until the establishment of the Italian opera, and the celebrity of Handel, in some sort revived it. The quarrels of the furious partisans of Faustina and Cuzzoni, and the homage paid to Nicolini, and afterwards to Farinelli, are strong symptoms of what is called the revival of music in England. A great step, however, was gained. Throughout the musical world, melody, forgotten Vol. I. No. 2.-Museum. 0 and despised so long, began again to be attended to. Corelli and others are known to have been so far sensible of the excellence of some of the old airs, both of their own and of other countries, as to have made them the groundwork of many of their sonatas. From about this period, the national melodies of Italy, of Scotland, and of Ireland, may, it is said, be traced in the compositions of the best masters. Some of the most celebrated operatic songs now known, have the same origin. And if a single instance may suffice, I may mention, a that the far-famed “Nel cor piu” is taken, almost note for note, from an old Sicilian ballad. The success of the opera was an acknowledgment that songs are essentially dramatic; and it is confessed, in words at least, that, to the finished musician, feeling and expression are as necessary as science. If such be a tolerably correct sketch of the progress of this art; and if, as the course of events has seemed to indicate, the hypothesis of Rousseau be founded in truth, a key is afforded to the explanation of the many anomalies which 'music, in its modern practice, presents. That natural melody should be both neglected and depraved, appears to have been inevitable. The difficulties against which it has to struggle, are immoveable and overpowering. It is a most unequal conAict, to set Mr. Coleridge's "blind boy," with his “ pipe of sycamore," be his " notes as strangely moving" as they will, against the crash of a whole orchestra. Expressive melody must ever be in danger of being overwhelmed by mere harmony; and they who essay to rescue her from the depths of thorough bass, must, like Hot spur, dare « To dive unto the bottom of a sea And pluck up drown’d melody by the locks." It is a question, whether one air, during the last hundred years, has been composed by a professed musician, with any direct and intentional reference to any principle in nature, upon which musical expression can be founded. Strong as the assertion may seein, the chances are, that he who embraces music as a profession, and goes through an elaborate musical education, is less likely than other men to produce a naturally expressive combination of sound. This is no paradox, whatever may be thought of it. The fact is, that the harmopists have exterminated the melodists, as the great missal thrush does the common mavis. The race of bards, half poets half musicians, has disappeared, because it is next to impossible that such a being should continue to exist; nor, if he could, would he dare to bring forward one original composition. Ranking amongst the profounder studies, constituting a lucrative branch of trade, and giving employment to thousands, harmony must go nigh to overturn melody, by its very weight and momentum, if by nothing else. It is all-pervading. Now, who does not know how difficult it is for the greatest poetical genius to free himself, in any considerable degree, of those common-places and idioms which long custom, and eternal repetition of versifiers, made a habit almost as inevitable as a natural tendency. In mu is ten times worse. The common-place “musical phrases,” ure styled, which have spread themselves every where through um of the voluminous and endless compositions of science, a have of necessity become almost a part of the nature of every one who is possessed of a musical ear. They fly abroad “upon the wings of . the wind,” like the feathered seeds of the thistle or dandelion. There is no avoiding them. We hear them by day and by night; in the theatre, in the street, in the church, in the ball-room. Like Pharaoh's plagues, they follow us into our very chambers. The difficulty of original composition is thus increased a hundred-fold, and the most determined cultivator of simple, expressive melody, will find himself, at every step, sliding into some of the innumerable artificial turns or modulations with which constant custom has indelibly impressed his imagination. Should a composer of expressive airs, in a style similar to that of the old melodies, exist at this moment, he would be denied the very name of musician. He would be hooted at by nine out of ten, and for three or four different reasons. He would be told that his music required no execution ; he would hear it called simple stuff that a child might play or sing; he would be twitted with monotony of key; he would be reproached with not concluding upon the key-note, and with a score of other offences against rules of which he and nature knew nothing. He would be accused, as every musician who has dared to verge towards simplicity has been, of want of science. This was the fate of Piccini, of Pleyell, and of Shield. The constant craving for variety and for difficulty--the superior extent of the class of those who are affected by harmony only—and the consequent multiplicity of its professor's publications, exhibitions, and gains, must probably always give scientific music a preponderance. He only can be celebrated, who either distinguishes himself in elaborate composition, or in the performance of almost impossibilities of vocal or instrumental execution. That no alteration can take place in the present state of music, it would be presumption to say. That, since the invention of counterpoint, it has altered materially, though slowly, cannot be doubted. The advances, too, towards natural expression, however faint or sophisticated, are such as prove some recognizance of that principle of poetical imitation which seems to be the foundation of musical expression. That much of modern practice is totally inconsistent, and at direct variance with that principle, is true. It may be difficult to imagine how it has happened that, admitting so much, the whole has not followed-but the fact is so. If we look over a collection of modern music, we shall find, that, in the management of the time, the principle of natural imitation has been, upon the whole, adhered to. As in nature, grief expresses itself slowly, and joy rapidly; so in modern compositions, as well as in the old airs, the vivaces are played quickly, and the affetuosos more slowly. As in nature, we find that passion hurries particular words and tones, although the general effect is plaintive and slow, so in the old pathetic airs we find that semiquavers to the extent of two or four at once, are generally and judiciously used. In modern music, the same principle seems to be decidedly admitted; but pushed by a love of novelty and of execution to an excess which, far o'erstepping the modesty of nature, of course totally mars the effect originally intended. To the exaggerations of the stage may be traced many of the corruptions of musical expression; and it seems to be probable, that the introduction of long hurried hubbubs of passages into airs essentially |