The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-27
THE AUGUST MAGAZINES.
tPUTNANI,R.,,

The contents OF the August number of
Putnam'S magazine are as follows
Glove in Filthy Early Life Among the
Cannibals, " II, edited by t. M. Coan, NJ. D.;
"a Summer Song" Ada w. Adams; yacht
ing" Sidney Hyde; "James Russell Lowell
"a s~onnet), John II. Euwer; The Life Mag
net, A.. Augustus Adee; "Can an Inebriate
Conquer Himself 2" f. H. Norton; "Our Ear
Hest Annalist, " Prof. G. w. Green; emusic
in Nature" Professor Schele de We're; "a
Woman's Right: VIII. Pauls Wooing-Mrs.
Mallane's Strategy" Mrs. NJ. G. Ames; Nov
1 Lay Me Down to Sleep" Mrs. f. Barrow;
can Arctic Aurora, and Other Matters in ST.
IBERIA, George KEENAN,; "Madame La Fayette
and her Mother, Miss s. F.. Cooper; ''The
Constitutional Crisis in England" Professor
Goodwin Smith; "Brevities: Making Ice by
Steam," James Finn; Editorial Notes.
Literature at Home" Literature, Art, and
Science Abroad"
From Professor Schele de Vere's paper on
Emusic in Nature" we take the following
reference to the power of music
The ancients comprehended under the
term of music the harmonious order of all
things, and hence included, besides the music
of our day, dancing, poetry, and even the
sciences. The great philosophers of Greece,
hence, saw music in the whole system of the
universe, and bequeathed thus to posterity
the mystic views of q harmony of the spheres
and the music of the Cosmos, which was long
the ~favorite theme of medieval writer's, re-
vived through the agency of Swedenborg, and
will probably long survive, in spite of our
better knowledge of the true nature of celes-
tial bodies. Although music is exclusively
mans prerogative-the songs of angels can
not be of the same nature, though miracles
may a them audible to human ears
Nature was here also his first teacher. The
singing of birds and the thousand sounds
of lifeless nature led, no doubt, at an early
period, to efforts at imitation. Diodorus
repeats the popular legend which ascrihes the
invention of flutes to the ingenuity of q
shepherd, who had listened with delight to
the whispering of the wind in the reeds of q
lake. String instruments followed probably
soon, and may, plausibly enough, have begun
with the hollow she'll of a tortoise, over
which, accidentally, a string was stretched
tightly. The Bible tells us, in like manner,
of Jubal, the jubilant, the musician, ''the
father of all such as handle the harp and
the organ" " who was descended from Cain
through his parents Lamech and Adah-a
fact which has led many a stern Puritan and
dreamy fanatic to attribute all manner of evil
effects to the cultivation of arts, and espe-
cially of music.
The origin of music is thus naturally lost
in the dark night of mans earliest history;
but the effects it has ever produced on his
mind have also been noticed from time i'm
memorial. Unlike modern writer's, who see
in music the only one, pure art, which cannot,
by any ingenuity and craft of men, be en-
ployed for vile or mean purposes, Plato fam
cied that certain notes called forth pride and
low passions, while others stimulated the
nobler affections. He went so far in his APP
prehensions on this score, that he feared a
reform in music might lead to a revolution
in the State, unconscious of the dangers with
which, if his fears were well founded, the au-
thor of the Emusic of the future" would have
threatened Europe. The Greeks, at all events,
gave a practical form to their views on the
subject, for all their laws and regulations, as
we'll as their legends and traditions, were
carefully put in verse and set to music, 80
that they could be publicly recited by the
agency of numerous choirs, with instrumental
accompaniment. The chosen people OBJ
served the same custom, mainly for the pur-
pose of thus making abstract dogmas attrac-
tive, and impressing them, at the same time,
more forcibly on the minds of the hearers. 1t
is questionable whether the same happy effect
may be expected from the recent attempt, by
one of our native artists, to arrange the Con-
s~titution Of the United States in the form OF
a symphony.
The fundamental idea of the ~aneients in
regard to the power of music was this: that
the human soul had been created in perfect
harmony; that this harmony was more or less
destroyed by its contact with earthly life, and
thatmusica alone had the divine power to restore
its pristine purity and perfection. Modern
theories, on the contrary, look upon music as
the language of angels and sinless beings,
with whom man dwelt before he was sent into
this wicked world, and teach that a few strains
and faint echoes still linger in his mind,
which he tries to utter by means of the beau.
tiful art. All nations, however, agree upon
the almost magic power indwelling in music.
Now it enables Orpheus to tame the wild
beasts of the forest and to induce rocks and
mighty trees to join in merry dance, and
now it enables Amphion to build the walls
of Thebes, the stones following willingly the
impulse given by the sound of his Tyre. In
one age music thus builds cities; in another
it casts down the walls of Jericho. In distant
Finland the god Wainamonen strikes his
cithern, and the waves of the sea grow calm,
the trees wave their branches in time with
his strains, the bears remain motionless
in the forests, and at last the god him.
self is SO deeply moved that he sheds a tor
rent of tears, which instantly change into
pearls. India is full of extrayagant myths
connected with the power of music, not over
men only, but over the gods themselves, and
speaks of a famous singer, whose charms
were SO potent, that once, when he recited 9
song dedicated to Night, the sun hid itself,
and deep darkness spread around him as fal
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