England. At this meeting, the oratorio of Jephtha was entirely performed, under the direction of Mr. Commissioner Bates, for the benefit of the Leicester Infirmary, and who opened the organ built by Snetzler for the occasion. Captain Cook, who had just returned from his voyage round the world, brought with him Omai, the son of the King of the Sandwich isles. Lord Sandwich, being at the head of the Admiralty, brought the black prince down to Leicester, to be present at this grand display of musical sounds.* The writer well recollects his tall commanding figure, and the astonishment he expressed, as well as that of the company, in viewing a person so extraordinary. Lord Sandwich, who had regular oratorios performed at Hinchinbrook, was so enamored with the thunder of the drums, that he had one side of his music-room strained with parchment, which, upon being suddenly struck, so alarmed the company, as to throw many into fits, which his lordship maintained was a certain proof of the boldness of the effect.

Drums can only be used in large and powerful bands, and none are effective but those of the largest size. When introduced to represent the roll of thunder, they are peculiarly grand. As an

* On the return of Lord Sandwich, he waited on his Majesty at Kew, and after more weighty business, mentioned the music meeting at Leicester, at which his Majesty was pleased to say, he could have wished to have been present. From this conversation, and subsequent conferences, the great Abbey meeting originated, which Mr. Bates was afterwards solicited to conduct.-Cradock's Memoirs, vol. i.

instance of their power, we may mention the chorus in Judah, which describes the destruction of the Midianites, The rolling thunder He cast on all! Their introduction, in this place, is truly dramatic and sublime!

Some of the finest effects of the drum are produced by its pianissimo, which apparently removes the sounds to an immeasurable distance, and thus supplies the mind with an idea of their vastness.

In one of Paganini's wonderful exhibitions, the piece opens with a tremulous sound from the double drum, so faint as scarcely to be heard, but sufficient to rouse the attention of the musician. In a few seconds the sound returns, upon which the violinist starts, and looks behind him, as if he apprehended the approach of something terrible. On the repetition of this tremulous, but less distant, sound, he seizes his violin, and with three or four miraculous and furious strokes of the bow, throws his audience into a frenzy of astonishment and delight.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE ROAR OF STORMS.

WHO has not felt the charms of a winter's evening, the cheerful fire and warm hearth-rug, with curtains

falling in ample draperies upon the floor, when the storm has been raging without? The whistling trees, the cries of the blast through the crannies of the hall, as if benighted wretches were imploring shelter? These are the sounds that touch the musician's ear. Sounds, still more awful, are the hollow murmurs of earthquakes, the thunder of volcanos, and the roar of hurricanes. Happily we are not visited with these tremendous convulsions; yet we have them upon a smaller scale, sufficient to raise the sublimest sensations. Lying, as we do, in the midst of waters, the grandest exhibition with us is the sea in a storm. When at rest, like a monster asleep, it strikes us with awe by its vastness; but when roused into tempestuous fury, and swelling waves threaten to overwhelm the land, we may truly say, that in Britain, Neptune has fixed his throne. Winstanley, in his description of the Eddystone Lighthouse, has represented the sea as dashing a hundred feet above the top of that perilous structure. But the furious commotion of the northern sea far surpasses this in grandeur. A friend of the writer, who was employed upon the trigonometrical survey in the Orkney Isles, describes the waves in that region during a storm, to be of the most frightful vastness, striking the granite face of the perpendicular rocks with a force so tremendous, as to carry the spray over the island for thirty miles, destroying the crops in the whole of the distance. It is this scenery in Nature's theatre, ac

companied by the roar of the elements, that so appals us, that we involuntarily turn away from the stupendous sight.

In the storms on land, trees are the grand instruments which augment the mighty roar. Their yells, mixed up with the blast, send forth the most terrific harmonies. They who have traversed the black forests in Germany can have some idea of the horrid din of those domains. The common people hide themselves from the Spirit of the woods, little reflecting that it is the lashing winds against the giant trunks of the forest, which cause the dreadful howlings they hear! Sir Thomas Lauder has given us some idea of these effects, in the hurricanes of Scotland, 1829, when he describes the flood of Moray. 'There was something inexpressibly fearful and sub'lime in the roar of the torrents which filled the ' valley, and the fitful gusts of the north wind that groaned among the woods. The tall ornamental trees, one by one, had begun to yield: the noise was 'a distinct combination of two kinds of sound; one, ' a uniform continued roar; the other, like rapid discharges of many cannons at once. The first pro'ceeded from the violence of the water; the other, 'which was heard through it, and as it were muffled 'by it, came from the enormous stones which the stream was hurling over its rocky bed. Above all 'this, was heard the fiend-like shriek of the wind, 'yelling, as if the demon of desolation had been 'riding upon its blast. The whole scene had an air

' of unreality about it, that bewildered the senses. 'It was like some of those wild dramatic exhibitions, where Nature's operations are outheroded by the 'mechanist of a theatre, where mountains are thrown ' down by artificial storms. Never did the unsub'stantiality of all earthly things come so perfectly 'home to my conviction. The hand of God appeared 'to be at work, and I felt that, had he only pro'nounced his dread fiat millions of such worlds as 'that we inhabit would cease to exist!' It is only in situations like these,* where the sounds are reflected by surrounding hills, that we can at all feel the sublimity of a storm. In the polar regions, where no traces of vegetation appear upon that glassy surface, there is a complete absence of sound: as on the highest point of the Alps, a 'solemn silence reigns.' But as the avalanches descend, their thunders roll through the vallies in awful grandeur.

Perhaps of all noises which are augmented by continued reverberations, none are more appalling than the experiment of rolling a portion of rock into Heldon Hole, in Derbyshire. To stand on the brink of this fathomless gulph, and to hear the thundering mass fall from cavern to cavern, wakening the frightful echoes in the vast chambers below, fills the mind with terror and dismay. This noise, more terrible than the whirlpool of Charybdis, is, in some degree, imitated by Haydn, in a chorus in Judah, at the words, The Lord devoureth them all. The

* The scene lay in an amphitheatre of rocks and mountains.