folitude was cheared by his lyre; the English peasant rejoices in his pipe and tabor; and the flute is the delight and folace of Frederic.

It's effect is not lefs fenfible upon

brutes than upon men:

For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race, of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bourds, bellowing and neighing
loud,

(Which is the hot condition of their blood) If they perchance but hear a trumpet found, air of mufic touch their ears,

Or

any

You fhall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their favage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,

By the sweet

power

of Mufic.

I always

I always confider the Mufe of Harmony as a beautiful foreigner who speaks a language I do not understand; but whofe voice is fo fweet and fo expreffive, that when her foul is mov'd, or her imagination warmed, she makes me fympathize with all her feelings; and as fhe is differently affected by pleasure or by pain, I glow with tranfport, or I melt

in tears.

"Till I vifited Italy, Dryden's Ode appeared to me an extravagant fiction. Charming by it's numbers, brilliant in it's language, animating and impofing by the variety, beauty, and grandeur of it's images, it feemed, if I may fo fay, a lovely picture painted upon cobweb; the colours bright, the groupes moft happily

F3

happily contrafted, the forms fublime and elegant; but the ground flimfy and unfubftantial. I admired the poet's boldness; I thought his Muse had made a daring flight; but I regretted that the had left reafon and truth behind her. Let any

I do no longer think fo.

man who understands Italian, who has a good ear and a feeling foul, go to a concert at Rome. Let him hear a firstrate performer fing three fift-rate compofitions on Joy, Pity, and Revenge: I will venture to affirm, that the transitions. produced in his foul fhall be as fure and fudden as thofe mentioned by the poet to have paffed in the breaft of Alexander. Let him then recollect the character of the Prince; it was the boiling, impetuous

impetuous fon of Philip; the fituation ; a feaft where he was already heated with wine the previous difpofition of his foul; it was elate with joy for Perfia won the concomitant circumstances; the lovely Thais at his fide, in flower of youth and beauty's pride, whofe eyes darted contagious fire in his foul; his valiant chiefs, the partners of his toils and witnesses of his triumphs, difpofed around him. When he has reflected an inftant on thefe ideas, let him confider the choice of Timotheus's fubjects; how calculated to operate on fuch a character, in fuch a fituation; and then bringing together the effects he feels produced on himself, and thofe that are

painted in this celeftial Ode, he will no longer think the Poet has excurfed into the abfolutely airy Regions of Fancy, but that he has confined himself within the literal bounds of probability and reason.

I fhall not mention the furprizing power of founds in curing the bite of the Tarantula; but I cannot pafs in filence Plato's Idea of the effect of Mufic upon the character of a nation. He thought that no change could be made in the harmony of a country, without bringing on neceffarily a change in the Such an idea as this must

manners.

appear fingularly extravagant when applied to the organs of our Northern nations. But when the organifation of the people to whom he fpoke is confidered;