ORIGINAL PAPERS. ART. PAGE. I. On Music: No. I. with reference to the Principles of the Beautiful in that Art 297 II. Songs of the Cid, No. I. by Mrs. Hemans: The Ċid's Death-bed, a Ballad - 307 III. The First of April, or Arte perire suâ - 308 IV. Spring, Youth, and Love 312 V. Peter Pindarics: Patent Brown Stout; York Kidney Potatoes XI. London Lyrics: The Upas in Marybone-lane; An Actor's Meditations; The Minstrel 343 XII. British Galleries of Art, No. IV. Windsor Castle XIV. Heaven and Earth, a Mystery 353 XV. The Physician, No. V.: Of Colds, Coughs, and Catarrhal Complaints 359 XVI. Grimm's Ghost, Letter XII. The Seven Singers XVII. On the Troubadours - 365 - 370 XVIII. Songs of the Cid: The Cid's Funeral Procession; The Cid's Rising 376 379 383 Notice. THE Number for January last begins the fifth volume of the NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, and the third year of Mr. CAMPBELL'S Editorship. Subscribers who may wish to begin with the Series commenced by Mr. CAMPBELL, will be supplied with the Work, in neat half binding, without an additional charge on the subscription price-of six dollars a year. The volumes contain about six hundred pages each. The Numbers of this Work will be forwarded by mail to any part of the United States, on the receipt of a year's subscription by the Publisher, OLIVER EVERETT, No. 13, Cornhill, Boston. ON MUSIC. No. 1.—With reference to the Principles of the Beautiful in that Art. MUSIC, unlike Sculpture and Painting, is a fine art, entirely the offspring of the human intellect and feeling; the latter are essentially imitative arts, while Music, a wonderful structure in its present state of perfection, stands proudly the absolute creation of man. This perfection, however, the gradual accumulation of ages of progressive improvement, is more felt than understood; and there are writers of unquestionable judgment and taste who have expressed strong doubts, whether the art rests upon laws common to other fine arts, and whether there are any fixed principles of the Beautiful, by which Music can be judged or governed. These doubts seem to acquire strength by a comparison of European music, in its present cultivated state, with the music which is admired in other countries, not altogether uncivilized; or with the few relics we possess of the music of the Ancient Greeks. The latter, no one will deny, carried architecture, sculpture, poetry, eloquence, and other arts, requiring the union of refined intellect with taste and a genial elevation of the mind, to a height so little approached by the moderns, that their labours in them are still revered as models. In painting, too, they were probably our superiors. Without attaching implicit faith to the glowing accounts, left us by the Greeks themselves, of the excellence of their paintings, it is reasonable to infer from the Grecian statues, basso-relievos and cameos, that in the arts of design and grouping they excelled the moderns; and some of the paintings rescued from Herculaneum and Pompeii, which are, evidently, only copies of worthier originals, sufficiently bespeak a high degree of excellence in the art of colouring. What, then, are we to judge of the music of the Greeks? Had they in that art alone made less advances towards perfection? They have not only handed down to us many accounts of the wonderful effects of their music, and of the great excellence of their singers and performers, but have left us theoretical works on music, which shew the deep researches they had made into the art. They had not only firmly established its matériel by the most profound and correct enquiries into the proportions of musical sounds, but, reasoning with their national acuteness upon the logical and philosophical branches of the art, had deduced numerous rules regarding the conduct of melody, rhythm, and other component parts of a general theory of music. They went so far as to establish scales suited to different purposes of expression, some of which the best modern singer is incapable of intonating or even comprehending. These people, then, must have carried music to great perfection: and what sort of music can it have been? how should we like it now? These are questions which naturally obtrude themselves, but upon which a great diversity of opinion has at all times prevailed, and which probably will never be satisfactorily decided. Two or three Greek songs have been preserved, and pretty correctly decyphered. Perhaps they were not first-rate compositions, although one comes to us with tolerably authentic recommendations as to its merit in the estiVOL. V. No. 28.-1823. 33 mation of contemporaries. On trying to vocalize them-even the attempt is disheartening-what a disappointment seizes the most enthusiastic admirer of Grecian art! What a strange combination of sounds! What an unaccountable commixture of treble and common time, how lame and unsatisfactory the cadences !—to a modern ear! To judge from these relics of an art carried very far indeed, it would seem that Grecian beauty in music must have been widely different from the ideas entertained on this subject by the moderns; and, on the other hand, it is equally probable that no love would be found to be lost between the parties, if it were possible to treat a contemporary of Pericles with a favourite and "much-admired" stave of the moderns. If Aristoxenus could be prevailed upon to leave his present quarters on the other side of the Styx, and to accept an order from Mr. Ebers for the pit of the King's Theatre, what would he say of the grand finale in Don Giovanni? We fancy we hear the Tarentine harmonist exclaim with disdain, "What means this chaos of confusion, this stunning noise? The orgies of the Baccha are soothing harmonies compared with this howling uproar of the very Eumenida themselves. Oh! Orpheus, and thou Delian Apollo! how deplorably do these barbarians prostitute the divine art ye have taught mortals on sacred Hellenic soil." We can see the Grecian harmonist hurry from the pit in disgust, without waiting for the divertissement, call a hackney chariot, and direct Jarvis to drive him the nearest way back to Charon's stairs (one of the fares omitted in Mr. Quaiff's book). Of Aristoxenus and his Greeks, we evidently can make nothing that will assist our purpose of musical comparison; let us turn to other nations on the globe, and see what their music will do for us in our search after some fixed principle of beauty in the art. The choice, unfortunately, is but very scanty. The Christian nations in Europe, and their colonies in other quarters of the globe, have, with some national shades of distinction, the same sort of music, the same notation of staves, and crotchets, and quavers, the same theory, where theory is to be found at all. And here we cannot help expressing, by the way, our wonder and admiration at this universality of written language in music-an advantage of which no other science can boast. A cavatina of Rossini's, inclosed in a letter to Quebec, Calcutta, Lima, CapeTown, Kamschatka, or Batavia, is read at sight, and sung with equal facility at all those places. But the countries where music, if it be found established upon any sort of system at all, rests upon principles different from our own, are very few in number; and unfortunately whatever they may offer in the way of the art, is but little known to us. Few travellers have known enough of music to give us any satisfactory account of the state of the scice, however rude, in such countries. Indeed had the case been otherwise, the harvest, however curious in some few particulars, would probably have been very scanty. Modern Greece and Turkey, Abyssinia, Persia, Hindoostan, and China, we apprehend, are the only countries where an inquisitive and competent traveller might gather a few gleanings indicative of any system in music; but we doubt much whether on this head any thing is to be met with in books beyond loose and unsatisfactory notices. Our own reading, at least, has not procured us any very material or available information. Some few national airs which we have seen, supposing them to be authentic, and correctly noted down (which latter circumstance is liable to doubt), are by no means calculated to impress the European amateur with a high idea of their music. These specimens, besides, are too few in number; but such as they are, they appear, generally, very plain, meagre, unrhythmical, and formed upon an imperfect scale. The Chinese scale, within the limits of the octave, seems to consist of but five notes instead of seven, the Fourth and Seventh being wanting; and, what must be deemed singularly curious, it precisely corresponds with the scale perceptible in the old Scotch tunes, of which a correct idea may be formed by striking, backwards or forwards, the short keys of an octave on the pianoforte, and devising melodies with the same. Of Modern Greek and Turkish music, we have ourselves heard specimens on the spot. Both nations possess the means of notation. The Turkish music is scarcely worth mentioning; it consists of some scanty traditionary scraps of the former Arabic science, with some intermixture from the Modern Greek. The Ottoman regiments have their military music, if it can be dignified with that name. It consists of various wind-instruments, seldom of the same pitch, all which play unisono, in a rough, shrieking, and wild style, apparently little calculated to inspire military ardour: nevertheless it sets the men marching with gaiety and apparent delight. They evidently enjoyed the sweet sounds. And why should we wonder? Does not that woful droner, the bagpipe, produce the same effect with our Highland regiments? Even the officers, although they may be familiar with Mozart and Haydn, cannot help an emotion of inward satisfaction. Music, after all, is a puzzle. The first Modern Greek air we heard sung in the Levant appeared to us, a tune totally unintelligible and ridiculous. On a repetition, and on hearing other Greek melodies, we found reason to qualify our first opinion. We began to perceive that their merit, or demerit, could not be fully judged by the standard of instruction in our possession. These melodies were not "bassed," like ours, upon the harmony of the common chord, or indeed upon any harmony. The great third (we mean our great third, the mediant §4) was obviously not in any of these tunes. Their third was the diton 4 of their Hellenic ancestors, who had very justly classed it among the discords. Considering that our mediant, or harmonic third, presents itself three times within the limits of an octave, and, of course, not once in a whole Greek melody, this canonical discrepancy, not to advert to others, would be quite sufficient to startle and displease an ear exclusively trained to the harmonic solfeggi. In the matter of rhythm and cadence we also observed wide deviations from our own rules. These opportunities, however, of local observation were not frequent, and they occurred more than twenty years ago, at a time of very active service, when our calling in those regions was any thing but musical; and, we will candidly add, when our store of musical knowledge did not extend beyond a tolerable expertness on the violin, a little touch of the piano, and of thorough-bass. With the knowledge since acquired, we should have been able to penetrate more deeply into this interesting subject; for we are persuaded, from |