A MONOGRAM OF OUR NATIONAL SONG. I. OF THE MINISTRY AND POWER OF MUSIC. "Be sure there's something coldly wrong About the heart that does not glow To hear its own, its native song." Music is a mysterious agent chiming grandly into this world's magnificent drama and imparting something of life and splendor to its ever shifting scenes. The universe itself, which for its harmony' the Greeks denominated κόσμος beauty, is but a royal harp-bird-strings, windstrings, star-strings, swept by the invisible fingers of the illustrious Composer himself, and throwing up sparkles of spray from the vast tone-ocean, rolling far beyond, to cheer the 1 Plato asserts that the soul of the world is conjoined with musical proportion; Sir Isaac Newton held that the principles of harmony pervade the universe, adducing as a proof " heart of man and give him some bright earnest of felicities to come. The grand Master of music is ever sending forth his bold anthems from the echoing mountains over which the pealing thunder breaks; from the woodlands rocked by tempests; from the ever-heaving sea; -he softens these wild symphonies by the gentle song of the nightingale, the whispering of the reeds and the dying cadences of the evening breeze; -he also gives man power to mingle in the general concert, with his own sweet strains of vocal or of instrumental music, and thus by the ministry of art enhance the common song. From the inexhaustible fountain of music he permits us to draw special strains for special ends; and these sometimes steal into the interior kingdom of the soul with power almost irresistible, unlock the cells of memory and of this the analogy subsisting between color and sound. So Shakespeare says: [Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1.] "There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubims; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." perform angelic marvels for the way-worn and the weary. Now a touch of some cunning harper summons wandering reason to its throne; now an Italian Tarantella, quick and joyous, allays the poison of a viper's sting; now a captive's plaintive melody melts a tyrant into tears and moves him to unbind the chains of slavery; now some Ranz des Vâches1 from Alpine horn makes the poor Swiss soldier pant and die for home; now a battle march or pibroch from a Highland bagpipe turns the tide of war, and now a Marseillaise, uprising as the swell of ocean, from a hundred thousand sons of liberty shakes a throne and shapes the destiny of an empire. We underrate, I apprehend, the power of patriotic song. That Marseillaise was called by Lamartine, the firewater of the old French revolution. It has several times been banished 1 Airs played on a long trumpet called the alp-horn by the mountaineers of Switzerland. J. J. Rousseau relates that these strains were so dear to the Swiss in the French armies that the bands were forbidden to play them under penalty of death, since they caused the Helvetians to desert or die of what they called la maladie du pays.—Moore's Cyc. Music, in loco. from the kingdom as an institution quite too strong for kings manage; and in the late upheaving of the masses in our own beloved land, I sometimes thought the grand old patriotic peal of Hail Columbia, the heart thrilling war song of the Star Spangled Banner, exercised a mightier sway than any other single cause whatever. The name of our illustrious leader acted as a charmed spell; the favoring smiles of beauty sent electric energy through the soldier's heart; the stars and stripes still fanned the sacred flame; but the rousing notes of our national patriotic music-whether rising from the mighty congregation-organs and voices joining, or from the black war-ship on the moon-lit ocean, or from the screaming fife and pealing drum upon the tented field, struck deeper chords and moved to nobler daring. Hence the leaders of the late rebellion were compelled to ostracize our national songs in order to keep their cause in countenance with the people. Yankee Doodle must be silenced ere the brave old flag could be cut down. So long as its rich, rolicksome notes came rolling out, the stars and stripes must float. |