watchfulness by the falling of water; and Pliny relates an anecdote of a Roman nobleman, who would recline upon a couch beneath one of his beech-trees, and be lulled to slumber by the falling of rain. Of a fine summer's evening, too, how delightful is it to pause upon the side of a hill which overlooks a favourite village, and listen to the various sounds which come softened by the distance! If some sounds are beautiful, there are others, also, which assume the character of sublimity, and some which partake of the nature of both. Such are those gentle breathings of the wind after a storm, resembling the sounds produced by the combustion of hydrogen gas, and which Gray, with much felicity, compares to the tones of the Eolian harp, admitting of agreeable interruptions, like the cadences which divide one harmonic period from another. To such sounds Mason alludes in the following passage: Can music's voice, can beauty's eye, Soft trickling down the moss-grown hill? While through the west, where sinks the crimson day, The notes that are at intervals heard from animals and birds are equally pleasing to the soul. "The wild dove," says an Arabian poet, "sooths me with her notes; like me, she has a dejected heart." Of sounds which partake of a sublime character, what can be more truly so than that of the falling of cataracts, than the rolling of thunder, the roaring of the woods at midnight, from which, Lucretius says, man first taught himself music; than the shrieks and cries of marine birds during a storm, or the deep howlings of the tempest itself, occasionally subsiding into a general hush; and those analogous sounds, K with little or no definite character, which Ossian calls the "spirit of the mountains," and to which Virgil alludes in his fifth Bucolic : Sounds that make Succeeding silence still more awful! In Fingal's Cave, in Staffa, among the Highlands, there is a cavity below the water, which at every flux and reflux of the tide sends forth a melodious murmur, on which account the peasantry call it by a name signifying "the Cave of Music." The intermittent sounds, too, which are heard among the clefts of desolate rocks, are equally pleasing to those who derive gratification from whatever is wild, grand, and magnificent. Nothing can be more productive of sublime emotion than the roar of the ocean against the rocks of St. Kilda, the pillars of Fingal, or the perpendicular cliffs of Penmaenmawr: sounds heard with equal effect near the chapel of St. Mildred, where the rocks form themselves into immense rampires, and where, amid the dashing of its waves, the sea appears as if it were captivated by the music of its own roar. * The fine semicircle in which this chapel is situated appears in some measure to resemble the bay of the sea, encompassed on three sides with steep and gigantic rocks, called by the Swedes Odin's Hall. In the times of Gothic barbarism, as we are informed by a celebrated Swiss philosopher, men "who were either sick of diseases esteemed mortal or incurable, or had grown infirm with age and were past all military action, fearing to die meanly and basely, as they esteemed it, in their beds, usu * Ezekiel seems to have had a transcendent idea of the music of waters." The glory of the God of Israel came from the east, and his voice was like the noise of many waters; while the earth shone with his glory." In his vision of the glory of God, the movements of the cherubim are again likened to the sound of waters, and in the Apocalypse there are several similar passages. ually caused themselves to be brought to the nearest of these rocks, whence they precipitated themselves into the sea; hoping, by the boldness of such violent death, to renew their claim to admission into the Hall of Odin, which they had lost by failing to die in combat or by arms." There is a whirlpool near the Isle of Jura, on the west coast of Scotland, which may be heard at a great distance, resembling the sound of a multitude of chariots. "On the shores of Argyleshire," says Campbell, "I have often listened with delight to the sound of this vortex, which creates a fine and magnificent effect." During storms on Mount Bogdo, a distant murmuring is heard as of many hundred voices joining in prayer. The Calmucs have many fables attached to this mountain in consequence, and they esteem it the abode of saints, who are engaged in singing spiritual songs. Sounds like these, heard among the lonely recesses of the Highlands, or on the shores of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, have the effect of rendering the inhabitants peculiarly alive to the errors of superstition.* Every one has read of the effect which the sirens are reported to have had on seamen voyaging near Cape Pelorus, in the Island of Sicily, no one having been able to withstand their vocal charms but Orpheus and Ulysses. The painters represented * "The singular connexion of causes and effects makes su perstition less to be wondered at, particularly among the ignorant; and when two facts, naturally unconnected, have been accidentally coincident, it is not singular that this coincidence should have been observed and registered, and that omens of the most absurd kind should be trusted in. In the west of England, half a century ago, a particular hollow noise on the seacoast was referred to a spirit or goblin called Bucca, and was supposed to foretel a shipwreck: the philosopher knows that sound travels much faster than currents in the air-and the sound always foretold the approach of a very heavy storm, which seldom takes place on that wild and rocky coast without a shipwreck on some part of its extensive shores, surrounded by the Atlantic."-Davy. one of them as singing, the second playing on the flute, and the third on the lyre. Claudian says that they inhabited harmonious rocks; that the sailors lost all desire of saving their vessels, were wrecked without regret, and expired in raptures.* ECHOES. So singular and agreeable are the sounds of an echo, especially by night, that it is no subject for wonder that the ancients, who embellished everything, should have touched that pleasing and mysterious phenomenon with the wand of allegory. Echo, says the poet, was the daughter of the air and the earth. She was one of the attendants of Juno, but, having displeased her imperious mistress, she was deprived of language, and the power of giving a response alone allowed to her. Roving afterward among the woods, she beheld Narcissus, and loved him. Some of the poets relate the story in a different manner, and even change the character of sex. Hylas, says Theocritus, one day going for water to quench the thirst of Hercules, the Naiads beheld him from the opposite bank, and, at the moment he was filling his vase, bore him away. Hercules wandered about the hills and forests in quest of him, and made each rock and valley resound with his name; when the Naiads, fearing that he would discover him in their fountain, changed him into an echo. The poets, as well as the mythologists, have made a charming use of this mysterious nymph; for, in spite of Theocritus, I am unwilling to believe that Echo could be masculine. Bion, in his poem on * Rollin considers this story of the sirens as an allegory; indicating that there are pleasures which, though they may seem to be innocent, are in the highest degree dangerous. the death of Adonis, introduces her in a passage which has been imitated and amplified by Camoëns. Moschus, too, in his Idyl on the death of his friend, beautifully represents Echo, on the death of Bion, as roving among the rocks, still listening to catch the last murmuring of his notes, and, since she listened in vain, becoming melancholy and silent. Echoes reside, for the most, in ruined abbeys, in caverns, and in grottoes; they reverberate among rocks, mountains, and icebergs; in the areas of antique halls, in the windings of long passages, and in the melancholy aisles of arched cathedrals. There is an ancient portico, near the temple of Clymenos, in the district of Cthonia, which repeats three times. In the sepulchre of Metella, the wife of Crassus, an echo repeated five different times in as many different keys; and Barthius relates that on the banks of the Naha, between Bingen and Coblentz, an echo repeated seventeen times. Though the person speaking or singing could scarcely be heard, the responses were loud and distinct, clear and various ; sometimes appearing to approach, at other times to come from a great distance, and much after the manner of an Eolian harp. In the cemetery of the Abercorn family, at Paisley, in the county of Renfrew, there is an echo exceedingly beautiful and romantic. When the door of the chapel is closed with any degree of violence, the reverberations are as loud as peals of thunder. Breathe a single note in music, and the tone ascends gradually, with a multitude of echoes, till it dies in soft and bewitching murmurs. If the effect of one instrument is delightful, that of several in concert is indescribably captivating, exciting the most tumultuous and rapturous sensations. In this chapel, lulled by ethereal echoes, sleeps Margery, the daughter of Bruce, the wife of Wallace, and mother of Robert, king of Scotland. Echoes multiplied every sound in the Grotto of |