The true, the beautiful and the good, all unite expressing-what? The thoughts, the concepin the one Infinite ideal, God; and all expressions tions of a creative mind. Does the assertion of these qualities are but reflections of the Divine.

If then we seek to comprehend the nature of the true art, we must be prepared to find our task reaching out into the Infinite; and hence our finite minds can never be satisfied with our own conclusions. There is no cause for discouragement in this fact. We shall be "ever learning" if we do not come to a "full knowledge of the truth." Let us then consider some of the the things we already know concerning the nature of music, and then pass to that which is not so well known and accepted.

need proof? Then think for a moment of the sublime conception in the mind of Handel, of the prophecies relating to our Lord and of his birth and mission, as revealed in the oratorio of "The Messiah." Such a revelation calls for our utmost mental activity, and even then we fail to comprehend all of its meaning. Herein we find the true intellectuality of music.

It contains thoughts, ideas and conceptions, which reveal the activity of the creative mind and require the intelligent comprehension of the listener. In this ability to understandingly appreciate good music hies all the difference beIn the first place, every one realizes that tween the musician and the uneducated hearer. music appeals to us through the ear. The sen- The musician listening to one of Beethoven's sibility responds, causing emotions of joy or sonatas, for instance, hears the theme or subsadness, peace or grandeur. To the majority of ject in the beginning of the first movement, and people this is the entire conception of the nature soon by a natural modulation, a counter-theme and office of music. But is this all? Is this is introduced. These two are developed and great art which has exerted and is to-day contrasted for a little way, and then begins an exerting such a powerful influence over the analysis of all they contain. The themes are whole civilized world, merely emotional in its held up in various lights by a sort of intellecteffects? I believe that such an estimate is ual argumentation, till what is in them is fully utterly unworthy of it. All pure, good music brought out and verified. Herein is an arthas a meaning which must be grasped by the type of discussion, whose whole aim is, unity intelligence. True, all noble music also appeals and truth. All this the musician understands to the higher emotions. This is perhaps the and keenly enjoys, because his mind has intermost vital, as it is the most obvious part of its preted for him the meaning of what his ear has effect. It is also true that emotion and intellect heard. But the uneducated listener has heard mutually react. When the emotions are kin- an unknown language, beautiful and pleasing dled the intellect is thereby stimulated. But for indeed, but as to understanding its meaning, he the present, we are to attend to but one of these does not believe it has any. It is by a process of intellectual measurements of effects, preciseHow, and to what extent does music demandy analagous to the measurements and calculathe action of the intellect for its production and tions made in all language study, that the appreciation? We might dwell upon the in- musician learns how to translate and interpret tellectual effort required in the mastery of the thoughts which have been conceived by the those philosophical principles upon which the master mind. tone art is based-principles which involve the laws of acoustics and the nature of musical tones. We might call attention to the mental discipline afforded by the intricate study of "harmony," beyond which lies the still more difficult study of "Counterpoint" and "form." But all this which we call philosophy or science of music is but the external form, the means of

elements.

element through each step in the development We have tried to trace briefly the intellectual of the tone art; and now looking at the finished Is it not this? Music is the key to the Divine structure, what grand idea does it suggest to us? method and harmony, which reign thoughout all the worlds of matter and of spirit.

A Song of the Future.

Sail fast, sail fast,

Ark of my hopes, ark of my dreams;
Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past,
Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams;
Sail fast, sail fast.

Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea
With news about the Future scent the sea:
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:
I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste;
Go, trembling song,

And stay not long; oh, stay not long:
Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove,
But thy eye is faith and thy wing is love.
-Sidney Lanier.

The Supernatural in Fiction.

found a place here, and while these crude works have not kept their place in literature, they remain to the historian as a mirror of the times.

On the rise of the realistic school, of which Richardson and Fielding were the chief founders, the romantic literature ceased altogether for the time, and the beginnings of the modern novel were far too intensely real and practical to admit of the introduction of any supernatural element.

The reaction came with ridiculous intensity in the romantic school of Walpole, Clara Reeve and Anne Radcliffe, with their medieval castles, Man is naturally a superstitious animal, and underground passages, magic, and all the antique no education has sufficed to drive this innate clap-trap which has haunted sensational fiction element from his constitution. The most learn- ever since. From that time on, while spectres, ed materialistic philosopher only differs in shrouded women in windy corridors with the degree from the Hottentot in this respect. He light blown out, skeletons in rusty chains, and may succeed in blinding even himself to the all their grewsome relatives, have sprung up existence of this quality, but nevertheless it still exists, ready to spring into life at the moment of sudden peril or of impending death. In all ages, man, oppressed by the limitations and evils of the physical world around him, looks toward "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns," for the fulfillment of his ideal.

like a most unhealthy growth of fungi on the pages of our cheap fiction, our higher novelists have shrunk from the supernatural as a tool too keen, and too difficult of use to be employed except on rare occasions, and by a most experienced hand.

The supernatural finds a place in all the forms of imaginative literature; the poem, the tale and On the other hand, it is also from the veiled the novel, but it is used quite differently in land of spirits that the human mind receives its each, and for this reason I purpose to examine deadliest terrors. Here the imagination of the the nature and divisions of the supernatural as poet runs riot, and the speculations of the phil- literary material, and then to proceed to apply osopher lose themselves in the measureless the results of the investigation to the various labyrinths of the Unknowable; where the wild-styles of literature.

est dreams and fancies, the loftiest hopes, the In the first place, then, works of fiction emhighest ideals of men, seem but atoms in the ploying the supernatural may differ in two parmidst of infinity.

What wonder, then, that the poet, the dramatist and the novelist should look to the super

natural as a most powerful means for moving

the soul!

ticulars:

1st, The nature of the Supernatural.
2nd, The nature of the Treatment.

Supernatural appears is Apparitions. Besides (1) The most common form in which the this there are Magic, Clairvoyance, Telepathy, In the Middle Ages, what literature there was was based for the most part upon the super-greatly as to credibility, force, and artistic fitSecond-sight, Metempsychosis, etc. These differ natural. The lays of the minstrels, and the ness. tales of chivalry alike found their source of inspiration here. Of realism there was none. This literature, limited as it was, was a reflection of the character of the age. The superstitions of the people, from the nobles to the peasants,

(2) The differences in the nature of treatment are much more various and complex.

1st, There is the work which is primarily supernatural, where the real holds a subordinate place; as in the old chivalry tales.

2d, Where the work is primarily realistic, but not perfectly done, is likely, instead of moving a touch of the genuine supernatural is intro- the reader, to bring down ridicule upon the duced; as in most of the modern magic novels. writer. 3d, Where the apparitions, etc., are purely subjective.

The two cross divisions, first, as to the nature of the supernatural, and second, as to the meth

4th, Where the whole turns out to be a hoax, od of treatment, with some half dozen heads the result of a dream, etc.

5th, Where the intention is left merely mysterious, as in some of Hawthorne's works, and Christabel, etc.

6th, Where the magic is introduced simply as a farce, with no attempt to explain it, as in the hoax; but, contrary to the first and second species, with the farcial intention of the whole apparent.

Only the first two really come under the head of the Supernatural, but the rest borrow so much of their effect from these, that they must also be considered.

under each, give us a large number of varieties, of which it will be impossible to treat of more than a few of the most important in this paper. The extremes of these varieties are far apart, but taken together they constitute the whole gamut of supernatural literature, from the most harrowing ghost story to the lightest farce, and accommodate every type of writer, from the tragedian to the humorist.

For instance, we have:

1st, The novel which is primarily supernatural, and deals in magic; Lord Lytton's Zanoni, and Strange Story, are good examples of this. After this analysis it may be easier to examine The immense difficulties of this style of compothe various branches of literature, and to form-sition in an age so free from superstition, keep ulate rules for the correct use of the supernatu- most writers from attempting such novels. ral in each.

Lord Lytton has, however, tried to resurrect the old oriental magic as literary material, and in several of his works, notably A Strange Story, and Zanoni, has used them quite effectively.

1st, In Poetry, as the special language of the imagination, the supernatural finds free room without coming in conflict with reason. Whether in the Iliad, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Faust, Macbeth, or Hamlet, it is both suitable and effective. It need be restricted by no age or country, nor by anything except the subject and the method of treatment. But with Poetry we are not concerned in the present article. 2d, Of Prose Fiction we have, (1) The Short happened with this novel. Tale, and (2) The Novel.

(1) The tale affords far greater facilities for the introduction of the weird and supernatural than the longer novel, for the attention can be held to the end without the intervention of any of the base and realistic duties of life. In the hands of a master it may be used effectively of every-day life without that projection against a dark back-ground of antiquity or of a foreign land which is usually essential in a novel of the same kind.

(2) The use of magic in a long novel is a much more delicate and perilous work, and if

2nd, The novel in which the apparition is introduced incidentally, simply to solve a difficulty in the plot, or to heighten the dramatic effect, rather than for its own sake, as in The Monastery, by, Scott. The greatest trouble with this is the difficulty of the union of the realistic with the superhuman. The chances are that it will cast ridicule on both, as actually

The stories of clairvoyance, telepathy, secondsight, etc., are more numerous, and owing to the credulity or at least hesitation of a large proportion of the people in regard to these subjects, may be used with less caution. Since the rise of Spiritualism in the United States, the number of these has increased immensely. Geo. Sand makes a striking use of second-sight in Consuelo.

Metempsychosis offers the same weird attraction to the story-writer of to-day that it did to the philosopher of antiquity. It is particularly well adapted to the production of ghastly and

terrible effects. Poe, in Ligeia, Berenice and of Usher and The Black Cat, the very climax other tales, reaches a pitch of horror absolutely of the weird and terrible is reached, yet while unsurpassed in this direction. It is, however, partaking largely of the mysterous and bizarre, well adapted to comic effects, as in Anstey's they do not actually trespass upon the realms Vice Versa, which will be spoken of in another place.

or fairy precinct, where actualities would not and who, conquering the feeling of scepticism be so terribly insisted upon as they are and that the supernatural causes in the reader, by must needs be in America. No writer without a the sheer force of his personality, will make an trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing a artistic and terribly effective use of The Superromance about a country where there is no natural in Fiction. shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, as is happily the case with my dear native land. . . . Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wall-flowers need ruins to make them grow."

66

In reply to this a critic in the Atlantic says: A ghost racketing about in some old-world relic, banging rusty armor, running down corridors, lighting mysterious flames in mouldy turrets, may be very interesting and pleasant to read about, but the supernatural element in him affects us no more than it does when the ghost in "Hamlet" stalks on the scene, or the figure of Mephistophilis pops up through the trap door. But a very small and insignificant ghost on a New England farm or in an American village brings the awesomeness of the supernatural very much home to our own business and bosoms."

The October Atlantic brings Henry James's notable serial, "The Princess Casamassima," to an exciting close. It is followed by a timely paper on the late King Ludwig, of Bavaria, under the title of "A Mad Monarch," by E. P. Evans; Mr. Edward F. Hayward discourses of John Wilson, as "A Literary Athlete," while Elizabeth Robins Pennell furnishes a curious study of "The Witches of Venice." Charles Egbert Craddock and William Henry Bishop continue their powerful narratives; Bradford Torrey and Mary Agnes Tincker contribute respectively a pretty out-door sketch and an Indian idyl, while more solid articles are Professor N. S. Shaler's "Race Prejudices," and Edward Hungerford's "The Rise of Arabian Learning," the latter being a record of the brief civilization of the Mohammedans. Edith M. Thomas and Henry Luders provide graceful poems, and there are careful reviews of Rice's Abraham Lincoln, Bacon's Dictionary of Boston, Hutchinson's Diary, and other books, while the Contributors' Club and Books of the Month bring the number to a close. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.

the

The October Eclectic has been laid before us, and Sir John Luboffers great attraction to its readers. bock has the place of honor in a disquisition on "Study of Science, and this is well supported in the next paper, on "Pasteur and Hydrophobia," by Prof. Ray Lancester. One of the greatest men everproduced in America, Alexander Hamilton, is discussed by A. G. Bradley, and the well-known critic, George Saintsbury, has something to say about the Scotch intellectual Magazine. Godwin Smith's paper on the "Capital of the United States," which will be read with interest. Other leading papers are Alex. H. Japp's "Some Unconscious Confessions of De Quincey," and a very readable paper by Sophie Weisse on the great German historian, Ranke, with reminiscences of Berlin from 1884 to 1886. Vernon Lee, under the head of "Perigot," contributes interesting notes on the dramatic in litera

It is not difficult to see the truth and error of both of these views when you consider the great number of forms that the supernatural may take. In a hitherto unexplored science, without nomenclature as yet, it is difficult to formulate rules or to make many specifications, but it is easy to see that both are right and both are wrong. Individual peculiarity is the most trustworthy guide in this particular. Haw-giant, Christopher North, the founder of Blackwood's thorne's poetic genius did not lead him astray in inclining him to Italy, any more than Conway's did in leading him to choose stories of English life. Writers of the supernatural have a Scylla and Charybdis to encounter, upon one of which everyone so far has fallen. The one is the danger of too great vagueness and mysticism, the other lies in the incongruity and inharmoniousness of the two elements, the real and the supernatural. It is not too much, however, to hope that in the future some great artist will who will be capable of drawing arise who from the supernatural all the force that it derives from every-day life and common characters

ture and art, and the author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," has something to say on the always suggestive subject of money. The poems and shorter papers are of marked interest, F. T. Palgrave's ballad of "Pausanias and Cleonice" being especially noticeable.

York. Terms, $5.00 a year; single numbers, 45 cents; Published by E. R. Pelton, 25 Bond street, New trial subscription for 3 months, $1. Eclectic and any $4 Magazine, $8.