nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment; she will glory in his fame and exult in his prosperity and, if misfortune overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from misfortune; and if disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love and cherish him in spite of his disgrace; and if all the world beside cast him off, she will be all the world to him.

MOTHER.

Washington Irving, Sketch Book.

THE mother, with anticipated glee,

Smiles o'er the child, that, standing by her chair
And flattening its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up, and doth its rosy lips prepare

To mock the coming sounds. At that sweet sight
She hears her own voice with a new delight;

And if the babe perchance should lisp the notes aright,
Then is she tenfold gladder than before.

Coleridge, The Blossoming of the Solitary Date Tree.

MOTHER.

THERE is a sight all hearts beguiling—
A youthful mother to her infant smiling,
Who, with spread arms and dancing feet,
And cooing voice, returns its answer sweet.

Joanna Baillie, Metrical Legends, Lady Griseld Baillie.

MOTHERS.

I THINK it must somewhere be written, that the virtues of mothers shall occasionally be visited on their children, as well as the sins of the fathers.

Dickens, Bleak House.

MUSIC.

THERE are few who have not felt the charms of music, and acknowledge its expressions to be intelligible to the

heart. It is a language of delightful sensations, that is far more eloquent than words: it breathes to the ear the clearest intimations; but how it was learned, to what origin we owe it or what is the meaning of some of its most affecting strains we know not.

The most elevated sensation of music arises from a confused perception of ideal or visionary beauty and rapture, which is sufficiently perceivable to fire the imagination, but not clear enough to become an object of knowledge. This shadowy beauty the mind attempts, with a languishing curiosity, to collect into a distinct object of view and comprehension; but it sinks and escapes, like the dissolving ideas of a delightful dream, that are neither within the reach of the memory nor yet totally fled. The noblest charm of music then, though real and affecting, seems too confused and fluid to be collected into a distinct idea.

MUSIC.

James Usher, Clio.

O MUSIC! thou that bringest the Past and the Future with their flying flames so near to our wounds, art thou the evening breath of this life, or the morning air of the life to come? Ay, thy sounds are echoes, which angels snatch from the second world's tones of gladness, to convey down into our mute hearts, into our dreary night, the faint springmelodies of the heavens flying far above us!

MUSIC.

Richter, Hesperus.

HOLY music reveals to the souls of men a past which they never have known, and a futurity, which, in this life at least, they never can know.

MUSIC.

LIKE perfumes on the wind,

Which none may stay or bind,

Richter.

The beautiful comes rushing through my soul;

I strive, with yearnings vain,
The spirit to detain,

Of the deep harmonies that past me roll.

Therefore disturbing dreams

Trouble the secret streams

And founts of music that o'erflow my breast;

Something far more divine

Than may on earth be mine,

Haunts my worn heart, and will not let me rest.

MUSIC.

Felicia Hemans.

MUSIC is the art of the prophets, the only art that can calm the agitations of the soul: it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

MUSIC.

Luther.

EVEN that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear disSir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici.

covers.

MUSIC.

I AM no musician, and want a good ear, and yet I am conscious of a power in music which I want words to describe. It touches chords, reaches depths in the soul, which lie beyond all other influences. It extends my consciousness, and has sometimes given me a pleasure which I may have found in nothing else. Nothing in my experience is more mysterious, more inexplicable. An instinct has always led men to transfer it to heaven: and I suspect the Christian, under its power, has often attained to a singular consciousness of his immortality.

Channing, Letter to Blanco White.

MUSIC.

THE man who stands listening to even a barrel-organ, because it repeats the tunes he loved from the lips of his nurse—or who follows a common ballad-singer, because her song is familiar in its sweetness, or linked with touching words, or hallowed by the remembrance of some other and dearest voice-surely that man has a thousand times more soul for music' than he who raves about execution, chromatic runs, semitones, etc. We would liken music to Aladdin's lamp-worthless in itself, not so for the spirits which obey its call. We love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings, it can summon with a touch.

L. E. Landon, Romance and Reality.

CHURCH MUSIC.

pos

THE end of church-music is to relieve the weariness of a long attention, to make the mind more cheerful and composed, and to endear the offices of religion. It should therefore imitate the perfume of the Jewish tabernacle, and have as little of the composition of common use as is sible. There must be no voluntary maggots, no military tattoos, no light and galliardizing notes; nothing that may make the fancy trifling, or raise an improper thought; this would be to profane the service, and to bring the playhouse into the church. Religious harmony must be moving, but noble withal-grave, solemn, and seraphic; fit for a martyr to play, and an angel to hear. It should be contrived so as to warm the best blood within us, and to take hold of the finest part of the affections; to transport us with the 'beauty of holiness,' to raise us above the satisfactions of life, and make us ambitious of the glories of heaven.

Jeremy Collier.

CHURCH MUSIC.

To it we in good measure owe the dignity and solemnity of our public worship, which else I fear, in its natural simplicity and plainness, would not so strongly strike, or so deeply affect the minds, as it ought to do, of the sluggish and inattentive, that is, of the far greatest part of mankind. But when voices and instruments are skilfully adapted to it, it appears to us in a majestic air and shape, and gives us very awful and reverent impressions, which, while they are upon us, it is impossible for us to be fixed and composed to the

utmost.

Further; the availableness of harmony to promote a pious disposition of mind will appear from the great influence it naturally has on the passions, which, when well directed and rightly applied, are the wings and sails of the mind that speed its passage to perfection, and are of particular and remarkable use in the offices of devotion; for devotion consists in an ascent of the mind towards God, attended with holy breathings of soul, and a divine exercise of all the passions and powers of the mind. These passions the melody of sounds serves only to guide and elevate towards their proper object; these it first calls forth and encourages, and then gradually raises and inflames. This it does to all of them, as the matter of hymns sung gives an occasion for the employing them; but the power of it is chiefly seen in advancing that most heavenly passion of love, which reigns always in pious breasts, and is the surest and most inseparable mark of true devotion, which recommends what we do in virtue of it to God, and makes it relishing to ourselves, and without which all our spiritual offerings, our prayers, and our praises are both insipid and unacceptable. At this our religion begins, and at this it ends; it is the sweetest companion and improvement of it here upon earth, and the very earnest and foretaste of heaven, of the pleasures