the shepherd began to dance as well as to play, and then the whole party exhibited the most elegant positions; and the evening passed as if it were consecrated to Apollo. Maximus Tyrius even ascribes the origin of the drama to the songs and dances of husbandmen, at the close of their harvests: and one of the most beautiful subjects, found at Herculaneum, represents a young villager, leaning on a pitcher near the margin of a fountain. A shepherd, passing with his flock, stops and plays an air on his pipe; while the villager seems to listen with timid and breathless rapture.

But, for the most part, the simple words "my own” have more charms for mankind, than all the pieces of Mozart or Handel; a gold cup than a statue of Canova; and men give more honour to a man of rank, than to a poet of the first order. These errors and prejudices will, one day, undulate

away.

Strabo relates, that as a musician was employing his talents, in the streets of Lassus, a town chiefly inhabited by fishermen, a crowd collected around him, and seemed to enjoy his music with no little delight. At length the signal being given, that the fish-market was open, all the fishermen left him but one. When the musician saw only one remaining, he began praising his taste, and admiring the pleasure with which he seemed to listen to the piece he had played; when the rest of his companions had precipitately left him, upon hearing the first bell. "What!" said the fisherman, who was deaf, "has the bell rung? By Jupiter, I did not hear it!" and off he ran after his brother fishermen.

A taste for melody is almost universal; a taste for harmony is but slowly acquired. Melody delights us in youth; harmony gratifies us in manhood; but age recurs to melody, because it associates the spring of life with its winter.

Haydn always spoke of those solitary hours, he had passed in his garden, and in musical application, as the happiest of his life. Mozart, to his other qualifications, loved Nature in

her most beautiful aspects. Gifted with talents, equalled only by Haydn, and surpassed only by Handel, he lived in a garden, in the suburbs of Vienna; where he enjoyed every fine evening of summer: attending to his flowers and shrubs; enjoying the delicious coolness of the air, in the society of his wife and friends; whom he frequently delighted with playing over to them the pieces of music, he had recently composed.

Bombet a distinguishes the several eminent composers of Germany and Italy, by associating them with painters. Haydn he calls the Tintoret of Music; Pergolese he associates with Raphael; Sacchini with Correggio; Hesse with Rubens; Paesiello with Guido; Piccini with Titian; and Mozart with Domenichino. Durante has been styled the Leonardo da Vinci, and Handel the Michael Angelo of music.

Pergolesi died in 1733; Metastasio in 1782; Mozart in 1792; Cimarosa in 1801; and Haydn, the creator of symphony, in 1809. Cimarosa composed best, when surrounded by his friends; Paesiello in bed; Sacchini in the society of his mistress; but Haydn in the solitude of his chamber. While listening to the harmonies and melodies of these composers, we seem to realise the sentiments of those Hindoos, who explain their love of music, by asserting, that it recals to mind the music of paradise, which they had heard in a preexistent state.

The musical instruments, now in use in Greece, are the lyre, lute, bagpipe, tamboura, monochord, pipe, pipe of Pan, and cymbals. The pipe of Pan is generally the instrument of the peasants. In some of the valleys in Sweden, a pipe, resembling the old English flute, is used: among the Finlanders the harpu, with five strings. Their national melody is the Runa; and no inconsiderable number of Runic songs are the production of Finnish female peasants. The Lap

a P. 301.

b Dodwell's Greece, vol. ii. p. 493, 4to.

* Acerbi.

C

landers, on the contrary, are such entire strangers to musica, that they have not a single instrument.

There is not a finer collection of objects in the whole circle of visible nature, than a view of the ocean on one side, and of the harvest moon, rising from among purple clouds over the summit of a gigantic range of mountains and rocks, on the other. And yet how much solemnity does this assemblage acquire from the murmuring of the waves, softly laving the beach in autumn, or of the billows, rudely rushing against the rocks in winter. The former of these scenes, too, is magically improved by that interest, which can be lent to it by the flute, the pipe, the flageolet, or the shepherd's reed. As Barrow was ascending Mount Teneriffe, the impressive scene was heightened by the presence of a storm, during the intervals of which were heard the sounds of the guides and muleteers, singing in full chorus the midnight hymn to the Virgin.

WRITERS OF DESCRIPTIVE ROMANCES.

THE Concord of sounds is not more grateful to the genuine lover of music, than Nature, exhibited in all its grace of drapery, is to the generality of mankind. So common is this taste, particularly with that part of the community, who are young, and of good dispositions, that there is scarcely a writer of romance, who does not attempt to gratify it. Hence our romance writers frequently select, as the theatres of action, the forests of Germany, the vales of Languedoc, the mountains of Switzerland, the plains of Tuscany, or the delightful environs of Rome, Naples, and Palermo. For elegance of taste and sentiment, for the variety and strength, the beauty and force of her descriptions, Mrs. Ratcliffe, bred in the schools of Dante and Ariosto, and whom the Muses recognise as the sister of Salvator Rosa,-stands Clarke, Scandinav. p. 440.

a

b Voy. to Cochin China, p. 43, 4to.

unrivalled in her department of romance.

It is impossible

to read this enchanting writer, without following her in all her magic windings. If she traverse the tops of the Pyrenees, the romantic plains of Gascony, the odoriferous shores of Languedoc; the mountains of Switzerland, or the vales of Savoy; we are never weary of the journey. If she lead us through a forest, at morning, evening, or in the gloom of night, still are we enchained, as with a magic girdle, and follow from scene to scene, unsatiated and untired a.

Rousseau confesses, that when he was forming the plan of his New Heloise, he was anxious to select a country, which should be worthy of his characters. He was, in consequence, some time before he could finally determine upon the province, in which he should lay the scene of that celebrated romance. He successively called to mind the most delightful spots that he had seen; but he remembered no grove sufficiently charming; no glen sufficiently beautiful. The valleys of Thessaly would have fixed his wavering thought; but those valleys he had never seen: and, fatigued with invention, he desired a landscape of reality, to elicit his descriptive powers, and to operate, as a point, on which he might occasionally repose his strong, vivid, and excursive imagination. At length, weary of selection, he fixed upon those vales, and

a For this criticism Mrs. Ratcliffe was pleased to send me her thanks. Some time after, I was invited to supper. Her conversation was delightful! She sung Adeste Fideles with a voice mellow and melodious, but somewhat tremulous. Her countenance indicated melancholy. She had been, doubtless, in her youth, beautiful. She was a great admirer of Schiller's Robbers. Her favourite tragedy was Macbeth. Her favourite painters were, Salvator, Claude, and Gaspar Poussin: her favourite poets, after Shakspeare, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton.

There was, for many years, a report that this accomplished lady was afflicted with insanity. How the report came to be raised I know not; but, I believe, it never was the case. She had not only an elegant taste, but a com. prehensive understanding. She died in 1823; and was buried in the chapel of ease, (belonging to the parish of St. George, Hanover Square,) at Bayswater. I have read her ROMANCE OF THE FOREST four times; her ITALIAN five times; her MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO nine times; and my imagination is, even now, always charmed whenever I think of either.

upon that lake, which, in early life, had charmed his fancy, and formed his taste. Who has not beheld the pictures of his youth, in the first part of his Confessions? and who has not been captivated with the description, he has given, of Geneva and Vevay, the Lake of Lausanne, and the orchard of Clarens?

DESCRIPTIVE POETS.

In general description, Homer was as great a master, as in the sublime departments of his art. What can be more admirable, than the scenes of harvest and the vintage, with which he has embellished the eighteenth book of the Iliad? As to his gardens of Alcinous, I must take the liberty of observing, that, as they seem to have exhibited a union of the modern kitchen garden of Italy and the ancient orchard of Greece, they are no more to be compared with Milton's Garden of Eden, than a Dutch landscape is to an Italian

one.

Hesiod has many descriptions of rural scenery; sketched with all the truth and simplicity of Nature. He deserves the elegant encomiums of Heinsius. There are also some fine specimens of landscape painting in Apollonius Rhodius; particularly in those terrific scenes, which announce the approach to Tartarus. It is curious, however, that though Greece had so many poets, and so many objects, which conspire to form the poet, yet none of them, except Hesiod and Aratus, have left any particular indication of their having derived much vivid satisfaction from them. Nor have they left any poem, that can vie with the Fleece of Dyer; the Cyder of Phillips; Grongar Hill; Pope's Windsor Forest; or Thomson's Sea

sons.

Among the Latins, Virgil excels in the delineation of particular, and Lucretius in that of general landscape. What a passage is the following!