most beautiful poems, an admixture of the world's baser influence is necessary to utilize the divine essence of man. Experience teaches expression, though in that expression the subtler, ethereal quality of the mind becomes for the most part bewildered into commonplace. Divine wisdom must conform to the rules of grammar and the coarse sounds of current speech: so must the harmony of Apollo himself be thrust through the straitened mould of chromatic scales and made to thread the intricacies of counterpoint.

Therefore, grumble not, O hardened, unsympathetic Londoner, if thy morning slumbers be broken by the shriek of the fiddle or the shrill pertinacity of the flute. You cannot of course bring yourself to believe that futile attempts to master a simple theme may be the untutored stammering of a soul bursting with music, whose lot perhaps in some future day, in some future world, will be to entrance his thousands, even as Israfel holds spell-bound the denizens of Paradise with the music of his heart-strings. This, you say, is hard to believe; therefore let me put another picture before you!

The scene is a garret; it is a bitter winter's day; the wind howls around and enters through a hundred crevices; an ember or two smoulders on the hearth. At a rickety table, huddled up into the corner in a vain attempt to elude the network of draughts which intersect the apartment, sits, lost in his work, the young musician. He has just completed the score of his symphony; it is his first. Smaller works he has done, and has tried in vain to get them performed, but this is that work which will make him famous for centuries to come. Perhaps it is the last thing he will ever do. Pinched by famine, benumbed with cold, he has, sown in his veins, the seeds of a fatal disease. He has just finished his score, which he regards with admiration. He has no doubts of its success. He turns to the beginning, hums the theme, gets more and more excited, rises to his feet, and seizes the crutch on which he drags himself to the nearest eating-house when he has money for a meal. He fancies himself in the national concert hall. Thousands of eager spectators throng that vast auditorium behind him. He hears the hum of expectancy. He gives the signal. The muted violins whisper forth the air; the basses and the 'cellos give it body; it develops; the brass contributes a mellow fulness; a running wave-like accompaniment is heard from the harp; the whole body of instruments is now at work. Crescendo !" The action of the young_composer's arm becomes animated. The time is quickened. Faster! Faster! The movement is reaching a clima. "Forte! forte ! più! più! fortissimo!" There peals forth a tremendous unison. But no! poor soul, there is no answer to his call but the trembling of the crazy boards on which he sways his fechle frame. There are no thousands in whose hearts he can

"

raise a kindred glow of emotion. That symphony, too, like his other works, will decay unknown in the closet. He sinks into his chair in a passion of weeping.

No doubt he is one of those whose efforts at composition, before he was forced to sell his piano, have educed many a muttered oath from his luckless neighbors. But he is a man of a great soul and a noble, useful life.

You deny; you disbelieve. You deny the utility of a life that achieves nought but disappointment. Reader, the fame of many a contemporary is built on such disappointments-the disappointments of others. You disbelieve that the history I have sketched is possible in these days of enterprising managers, of universal good taste, of charity organizations. Reader, the world is a wide world, and there is many a dreary spot in it. You ask, "Why does he waste his time and his life in seeking after the unattainable ?" You hate the pride that spurns what you call "a useful life." You would have him scrape the fiddle in a music-hall. You would wish him to dance attendance in the school-rooms of the rich. But you forget that where nature bestows fine brains she seldom adds a broad back. You forget that the subtle imagi. nation of the artist may be blighted in the tussle with mechanical routine and enforced inferiority. And yet you doubtless have friends whose existences have been embittered by the impossibility of exercising a fancied creative power, but to whom the necessity for bread has appeared paramount. Our poor friend did not so regard that necessity; and seeing the alternative, there is much to be said for his way of thinking. I beg pardon, I have unwittingly become serious.

Hogarth, I said, had not represented the woes of musicians-I meant the woes of unrecognized musical talent. His picture of the" Enraged Musician" portrays the outrage of musical sensibility. The ear that has, by long use, become accustomed only to sweet concordance, feels acutely the babel of that barbarous serenade. The sufferings of the "Enraged Musician" are our own intensified. It never, I confess, occurred to me till the other day that a musician who had thus suffered might mentally transfer his martyrdom to his neighbor, and thus become so struck with the brutalities he is committing as to desist altogether from music. This possibility suggested itself to me while reading Mr. Schuyler's interesting book on Turkestan. There appears to exist among the Tartars a refinement of feeling not credited to European votaries of harmony Mr. Schuyler will doubtless pardon me for not quoting the anecdote verbatim, as certain variations of language are neces sary to elucidate the meaning which I attach to the fable.

Its hero was a local saint, Khorkhut by name, whose stature, fourteen feet, made him an object of some eminence in the country.

He was fond of music, and had a desire to learn to play upon the lute. Accordingly, being of a sensitive temperament himself, and knowing of what discomfort to others are the ill-harmonies evoked by the unskilled hand, he unselfishly withdrew to the edge of the world in order to complete his musical education. In this hope, however, he was disappointed. Visited one night by a dream, he thought he saw some men digging a grave. For whom is that grave?" he asked. "For Khorkhut," they replied. He awoke, and the result of this short but plainly-pointed conversation was that he speedily removed his abiding-place. So hasty a determination, so evident a care for life, may strike the reader as inconsistent with that strength of character which marks every truly great man. A word about this hereafter. From the edge of the world Khorkhut now removes to its eastern corner. No rest, however, can this giant son of harmony find here. The same vision again assails him, and with the same results. Now he pitches his tent on the western corner; now on the northern; now on the southern; but all in vain. At length it dawned upon him that his only resource was to try the centre of the world; and he consequently encamped upon the banks of the Syr-Daria, which, as every wellinformed person knows, is the centre of the world. But alas! there too these hideous phantoms pursued him. Must I," he cried, in piteous lamentation, must I then resign all hope of being able to discourse with thee, O lute, O mistress, in that sweet language which thou alone understandest? Ye gods, if there be any pity in heaven," he continued (unconsciously quoting Eneas stock phrase), "have mercy on your hapless slave, who, after all, only wants to learn to play upon the lute." Then seeing the dark waters of the Syr Daria rolling beneath, and despairing of pity, he cast his mantle on the stream and himself on the mantle. But, wonderful to relate, those murky waters did not engulf him. He floated, and there, in this unassailable position, he found peace at length. He played his lute; he played it for a hundred years; and then he died. The manner or the cause of his death has not been transmitted to us. It must ever remain a mystery whether his passion for the lute was the secret of his longevity; or whether, had he been no musician, and lived like other folk, he might not have attained to even a greater age. Perhaps the mere fact of having so completely his own way delayed the process of natural decay. But, be that as it may, the issue is foreign to our subject.

The question which now concerns us is why was Khorkhut sainted? In some rustic European calendars we find such undeserving saints as Pilate and his wife; but the Easterns have generally some sufficient reason for their canonizations. Of his pedigree we know nothing; we may conclude therefore that the dignity was not hereditary. Stature is a sign of distinction in the East,

but it is an attribute of devils as well as heroes. Thus we may conjecture that his sainthood was conferred on him for some such reason as the following. He was a man who lived a long life with a distinct object in view, and, despite the difficulties thrown in his way, at last attained that object. These difficulties were aggravated-1, by the fact of his enormous stature, which rendered his proceedings a matter of general notoriety; 2, because of his extremely sensitive nature, which did not allow him to interfere with the comfort of his fellows; for the nightmares, which haunted him, were nothing but the reproaches of his unselfish conscience. Once, however, in the midst of the desolate flood of the Syr-Daria, he knew that he was at length alone, and could learn how to unburden his music-laden soul without annoyance to any one. These are nice points of feeling to be commemorated by barbarian Tartars, say you. Timour was a Tartar; and the reasons he alleged for conquest were substantially the same as those now put forward by Christian Russia.

Music is a physical necessity for certain people. No one will be inclined to doubt this who has been at the university, and heard the simultaneous burst of melody which arises the very instant that the clock marks the hour when the authority of learning is placed in abeyance and music sways the alternating sceptre. Thus, without doubt, there are many of us whom delicacy of feeling prevents from seeking to express our thoughts in harmony, herded together, as we are, in the metropolis, and since, unlike Khorkhut, we cannot play nomad.

Half of us thrive on noise, and the other half cannot subsist without absolute quiet. What, then, can be done? Can we, like the reverse of a solution I once heard of the poor-rate difficulty in Lon don, namely, to surround each rich man's house with a circle of squalid hovels can we banish all pianos and such-like inventions of the evil one to one quarter of London? Imagine, if you can, the difficulties of this! And if it were accomplished, imagine the rivalry that would spring up between the musical and the nonmusical members of the community. Our boasted London would then be little better than the Indian village of which Sir William Sleeman writes, where there are two Mohammedan parties, who celebrate their religion, one in silence, the other to the sound of the tom-tom. (N.B. I should think the quietists would ultimately adopt the rival mode of worship.)

I know of no remedy for this state of affairs. To me the problem appears insoluble. But let us not sit with folded hands! There is a palliative which suggests itself to me-a medicine prescribed by the most famous physicians a medicine easy of application, but difficult to meet with. It is charity.

Do I doctor myself with the medicine I prescribe to others? you

ask; or am I a musician, and thus plead the cause of my profession ?

Between ourselves, dear reader, neither is the case. I certainly do not practise what I preach, but being capable of some sort of studied noise which the lenient might possibly recognize as music, I am thus in a position to exercise the "lex talionis," which I do rigidly-" an eye for an eye," a headache for a headache. For further particulars inquire next door. L. T., in Cornhill Magazine.

DR. CHANNING, THE ABOLITIONIST.

THE Unitarian body in the new and old world have just been celebrating the centenary of Dr. William Ellery Channing, whom they claim as one of their greater prophets. That claim has been often challenged, and it must be allowed that to the average wayfarer the difficulty of differencing Channing from the best type of Christian known to us in these latter days is a very serious one. However, as he was bred in that church, and never formally withdrew from it, the Unitarians have, on the whole, a better right than any others to seize on the occasion for bringing him and his testimony once again prominently before us, and deserve the thanks of all friends of human progress for having done so with excellent taste and no little success. His life and work were many. sided, and well worth study on all sides, but my purpose is to touch on one only, and to speak of him in his relations to that small band of men and women who, to my mind, have earned the highest place as benefactors of our race in this strange and eventful century-to whom the seeker for heroic and Christian lives, for the simplest, the truest, the bravest followers of the Son of Man, will find his highest examples-the abolitionists of New England. I do not forget, I am proud always to remember, that Old England led the way, and that the struggle here too was one which tried men's hearts and reins. But honor to whom honor is due! And if we will try to think what our anti-slavery movement would have been had our 800,000 slaves been scattered over the southern counties of England, instead of over islands thousands of miles away, and had belonged by law to the noblemen and squires in those counties more strictly than their rabbits and hares belong to them under our game laws, we shall have little hesitation, I think, in yielding freely the foremost place to the group of New Eng landers among whom Channing stood out a noteworthy figure, in some respects undoubtedly the must noteworthy of all,