D.

Ample, grand, noble. Having more fire than C, it is suited to the loftiest purposes. In choral music it is the highest key, the treble having its cadence note on the fourth line.

B minor. Bewailing, but in too high a tone to excite commiseration.

E

in sharps.

Bright, pellucid, feminine; adapted to brilliant subjects. In this key Haydn has written his most elegant thoughts. Handel mistook its properties when he used it in the chorus, 'The many rend the skies with loud applause,' though higher than D, it is less loud, as it stretches the voice beyond its natural powers.

B in sharps. Keen and piercing, but seldom used.

Bb.

G minor.

The least interesting of any. It has not sufficient fire to render it majestic or grand, and it is too dull for song.

Meek and pensive; replete with melancholy.

Eb.

C minor.

Ab.

F minor.

Db major.

Full, mellow, soft and beautiful. It is a key in which all musicians delight; though less decided in its character than some of the others, the regularity of its beauty renders it a universal favorite.

Complaining; having something of the whining cant of B minor.

The most lovely of the tribe; unassuming, gentle, soft, delicate, and tender; having none of the pertness of A in sharps. Every author has been sensible of the charm of this key, and has reserved it for the expression of his most refined sentiments.

Religious, penitential, and gloomy. Awfully dark. In this remote key Beethoven has written his sublimest thoughts. He never enters it but for tragic purposes.

'It is sufficient to have hinted at these effects:*

A writer has observed (a) in tuning the piano-forte, the note F sharp, C sharp, and G sharp, which form the major thirds of the keys in sharps, are tuned sharper than the major thirds belonging to the flat keys. Hence the evident brilliancy of the one, and tender, melancholy expression of the other: and on stringed instruments it is obvious, (a) Harmonicon, p. 6, 1829.

'to account for them is difficult, but every musi'cian is sensible of their existence.'-Lives of Haydn and Mozart.

CHAPTER XLIII.

ON RHYTHM.

RHYTHM is to the ear what order and regularity are to the eye. When we survey the symmetry of the human form, we find the arms, the hands, the eyes, the fingers, equidistant from a line drawn down the nose, through the centre of the body. We discover a similar regularity in the vegetable tribes, and the very principles of architecture depend upon these due proportions. Though the ear receives but one impression at a time, and has to wait for the coming sounds to form a musical idea, yet in this succession it demands the same order, which, to the eye, is presented at once. If we refer to savage life we find an innate fondness for rhythm.* The recurthe character of the keys G, D, A, and E, must be more brilliant than any other, from the circumstance of the open strings forming the key

note.

* The Indian jugglers who exhibit such extraordinary feats with swords, cups and balls, depend upon the rhythm of the movement for the success of their performance. The balls are of different gravities, and are thrown with a certain velocity, so that they shall fall into the hand in the time of quavers and semiquavers, and from their being hollow and made like a coral bell, they give a jingling sound, by which they are more easily caught.

rence of similar sounds, at stated intervals, agrees with the motion of our animal spirits, and we naturally, in a state of joy, jump, laugh, and sing. Plutarch informs us that, in early times, such was the fondness for rhythm and numbers, that all instruction was given in musical verse; there was neither history, nor philosophy, nor an action described but what was dressed by the Muses. Before Herodotus, says Voltaire, the Greeks wrote all history in verse, which custom they borrowed from the Egyptians. The end of history was to preserve to posterity the memory of great men, whose example might be of service to mankind; and they laid hold of verse to assist the memory.

A boy who beats a drum may be incapable of discerning the beauties of harmony and melody, and yet have an ear for rhythm. If a nailer's hammer is held loosely in the hand and let fall upon that dead sort of anvil which they use, it will be found to rebound and dance upon the anvil in the following rhythmical triplets :

Without this motion intervening between the stroke, the nailer could neither perform his work so expeditiously nor so well. Rhythm may be said to be the map or ground plan upon which a musical composition proceeds. In language it regulates the flow

of words, and in dance it governs the movement of the feet and the inflections of the body. Without this symmetry no music can be deemed beautifulwithout it, ideas in themselves good and pleasing lose their charm. They may be compared to a confused heap of gaudy gems, which, viewed in a kaleidoscope, delight us by the beauty of their arrangement, and their interminable combinations. Pope, on hearing Handel play some of his finest pieces, declared that they gave him no sort of pleasure, that his ears were of that reprobate cast that he greatly preferred the simplicity of a ballad. It is hard to conceive how an ear so perfectly attuned to all the delicacies of rhythm, and poetical numbers, could be totally insensible to the beauty of musical sounds. Poets often possess no other faculty in common with the musician than that of rhythm, while the painter, with a more extended sympathy, evinces every other feeling for the art: so much so, that he describes his picture in a language made up of musical terms. Doctor Johnson was a poet of Pope's description, and Sir Walter Scott, the greatest writer of the age, has said, he had not an ear for anything in music beyond a ballad tune, or a march; and it is stated by Mr. Moore that the immortal Byron felt no gratification from music except from a simple air—while it is equally evident that the lyric bards, Shakspeare, Milton, and Moore, have written with all the feelings of the most sensitive musician.