years. In musical matters the change has been enormous. In the writings of musical critics of the time of Charles Knight there was either a note of despairing urgency or a note of cynical contempt whenever popular music was on the carpet as a topic. Then came Hickson, Hullah, Mainzer, and others. Even so late as the time when the Messrs. W. and R. Chambers were issuing their "Papers for the People," the tone of the musical propagandist was one of (what might be called) depreciating earnestness mingled with patronage, and it is still true that the English public is not, properly speaking, "musical." The mass of people do not care for music by itself, music pure and simple; they like it as a flavoring to other things, and as a sort of pleasant kill-time; but an average English audience do not listen to music with the disinterested brooding enjoyment of a German audience.

Nevertheless, the change that has taken place in these matters is, we may repeat, incalculably great; and, as usual in changes of wide scope, whether for better or worse, the alteration has been brought about in unexpected ways. A most pleasant writer in Knight's Penny Magazine published, among other suggestions, some hints for a very cheap musical instrument, promising the person who should invent it to make his name known from one end of the kingdom to the other. It was to be simple and easy to play, not very liable to get out of tune, and (I think) its cost was not to exceed thirty shillings. Well, no such instrument has yet been made. But the means and tastes of the respectable portion of the lower middle classes have wonderfully improved, and the harmonium has, perhaps, done even more than this admirable writer hoped for from the cheap musical instrument that he wanted some one to invent. And as for cheap music of high quality, it may be bought for almost nothing. The sale of penny sheets of such music is beyond our guessing, and almost any oratorio or opera may, unless we are mistaken, be bought as cheap as eighteen pence, while half-crown editions are as common as paving-stones.

We may speak of sacred and secular music as much as we please, and we may shut out certain forms of music from re

ligious uses, just as in early medieval times the Lydian mode" was excluded from cathedrals. Mr. Newman Hall was justly indignant when some volunteer musician performed a selection from Lecocq's "Madame Angot" at a religious meeting. But, upon close inspection, we find the boundary line between secular and sacred music cannot be kept sharp and clear, and it is certain that in our own day the culture of both kinds has proceeded at the same time and in company. No doubt there are households where Mendelssohn is played and Chopin would be shut out, but such houses are few. And, by the way, no great name in music is more closely connected with the growth of musical culture in England than that of Mendelssohn. While his music is of the highest kind there is a certain graceful intelligibility about it. bility about it. It had to fight its way like other new-born music, but it had not to encounter the same difficulties as the music of Beethoven or Schubert. Every new-comer in music has to make his own public. The case of Wagner is extreme, but it is in point.

The growth of musical culture is one thing, the growth of music another. Can a new musician strike into a new path in music? Mendelssohn stands committed, upon the report of Professor Marx, to some strong views in the negative direction.

The discussion seems to have turned largely upon the question whether Beethoven had "opened a new path." Mendelssohn appears to have denied that he had, and to have maintained that a new path was impossible :

Every one capable of wielding a shovel and moving his legs can open a path for himself; but if they employ the expression in the higher sense, I deny its applicability altogether. There is no such thing as a new road, simply because there is no new region of art to which it could lead. New roads! That artist is sure to be led astray who gives himself up to this evil demon! No artist has ever opened a new road. At the most he only did his work a little better than his immediate predecessors. Who is to strike out a new path in art? Well, has Beethoven shown us a new road entirely different from that in which Mozart walked? Are his symphonies altogether new in form and conception? I

A genius.

say No! Beethoven's forms are wider and broader; his style is more polyphonic and artistic; his ideas are more gloomy and melancholy, even where they endeavor to assume a cheerful tone; his instrumentation is fuller;-he has gone a little further on the road of his predecessors, but by no means struck out into a new path. And to be candid, where has he led us to ? Has he opened to us a region of art more beautiful than those previously known? As far as I am concerned I confess openly that I do not feel it."

But it is not such an easy question as it looks. Would it be inaccurate, comparing the church music of the time of Clement Marot with the music of the old Greeks, to say that "a new path" had been struck out? Or, to take the question of the dominant seventh,-when the use of this chord was discovered, was not a new path" opened? Again: suppose Wagner is right, suppose the present musical code, which forbids consecutive fifths and consecutive eighths, and some other things not alien to the music of the future," should come to be flung to the winds; surely we should have to enter upon a new path" then. Lastly, there is this question. The music of the East (we will say) is of such a character as not to be recognisable for pleasing music by a European ear. Now, what will happen to the music of the East? Will it gradually disappear under the advance of Western culture, or will any of its essential peculiarities undergo a process of incorporation into the Western modes? If the latter, there is no telling how very "new" the " new path" may be.

But we need not be anxious for any new path whatever; there is plenty of pleasure for us yet to be found in the old. Mr. Mill used, in his latter days, to be troubled by a very reasonable and too well-grounded fear-he dreaded lest the increase of population in England should not only tend to destroy individuality and greatness of character,-which it is fast going on to do; but that it should lead to the destruction of natural beauty in the face of the country,-which is also happening under our eyes. In youth he had, however, another apprehension, which was an absurd one. It struck him one day that the number of musical com

binations possible to us was limited, and that some day we should come to the end of our musical enjoyment. If he had done the sums in permutation which Professor Stanley Jevons and others have done, he would have seen that his fears were idle :

"If," says the learned Professor, "the whole population of the world, say one hundred thousand millions of persons, were to deal cards day and night for a hundred million years, they would not in that time have exhausted one hundred thousandth part of the possible deals. Now, even with the same hands the play may be almost infinitely varied, so that the complete variety of games which may exist is almost incalculably great. It is in the highest degree improbable that any one game of whist was ever exactly like another, except by intention.

"The end of novelty in art might well be dreaded, did we not find that nature at least has placed no attainable limit, and that the deficiency will lie in our inventive faculties. It would be a cheerless time, indeed, when all possible varieties of melody were exhausted; but it is. readily shown that if a peal of twentyfour bells had been rung continuously from the so-called beginning of the world to the present day, no approach could have been made to the completion of the possible changes. Nay, had every single minute been prolonged to 10,000. years, still the task would have been unaccomplished. As regards ordinary melodies, the eight notes of a single octave give more than 40,000 permutations, and two octaves more than a million millions. If we were to take into account the semitones, it would become apparent that it is practically impossible. to exhaust the variety of music.'

This is comforting, indeed. We will close these desultory remarks, which have gathered around the portrait of Mendelssohn, by a quotation from the latest Life of Mendelssohn, in which Mr. Bayard Taylor gives an account of an interview which, at twenty years of age, he had with the musician:

"The servant ushered me into a plainly-furnished room, containing a grand piano, and a few pictures and books, in addition to the ordinary articles. moment afterwards the door of an adjoining chamber opened, and Mendels

A

sohn appeared. . . . He at once gave me his hand, asked me to be seated, and drew another chair for himself to the little round table near the window.

"I sat thus, face to face with him, and again looked into those dark, lustrous, unfathomable eyes. They were black, but without the usual opaqueness of black eyes; shining,-not with a surface light, but with a pure, serene, planetary flame. His brow, white and unwrinkled, was high and nobly arched, with great breadth at the temples, strongly resembling that of Poe. His nose had the Jewish prominence, without its usual coarseness. I remember, particularly, that the nostrils were as finely cut and as flexible as an Arab's. The lips were thin, and rather long, but with an expression of indescribable sweetness in their delicate curves. His face was a long oval in form; and the complexion pale, but not pallid. As I looked upon him, I said to myself, The Prophet David!' and, since then, I have seen in the Hebrew families of Jerusalem, many of whom trace their descent from the princely houses of Israel, the same nobility of countenance. Those who have read the rhapsodical romance of Charles Auchester,' wherein the character of Seraphael is meant to represent Mendelssohn, will find his personality transfigured by one of his

ies under Carl Maria von Weber, his fellow-student, the boy Mendelssohn, was a picture of almost supernatural beauty."

There may be a little extravagance, or false sentiment, here, something of what is vulgarly called "spooning;" and the fancy that Mendelssohn resembled David is, of course, gratuitous. One general resemblance there always is in the heads of poets, and other idealists,that breadth at the temples of which Mr. Bayard Taylor speaks; but David was essentially a man of action and a warrior, while the exquisitely-gentle Mendelssohn was essentially a contemplatist. There is too much reason to fear that he died of contact with "men of action." He could not stand the world, with its "foolish fat" praise, its "owlish fat" blame, and its trade trickeries in the very porch of the temple, nay, sometimes up to the adytum. There are many forms of broken heart. Dickens's poor little dwarf said that when a man goes into society society goes into him. Scciety went into Mendelssohn, and he died of it. An outsider would have said, “If ever man had cause to be happy, it is this great and successful musician;" but deep down in his soul poor Mendelssohn was saying, with Shelley,

"Alas, this is not what I thought life was !"

The

"At last we're tired: my heart and I." And he sleeps.-Evening Hours.

LECTURE I.

THE aphorism that 'History repeats itself' is in no case more true than in regard to the subject on which I am now to address you. For there has been a continuity from the very earliest times of a belief more or less general, in the existence of occult' agencies, capable of manifesting themselves in the produc

tion of mysterious phenomena, of which ordinary experience does not furnish the rationale. And while this very continuity is maintained by some to be an evidence of the real existence of such agencies, it will be my purpose to show you that it proves nothing more than the widespread diffusion, alike among minds of the highest and of the lowest culture, of certain tendencies of thought, which have

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either created ideal marvels possessing no foundation whatever in fact, or have by exaggeration and distortion invested with a preternatural character occurrences which are perfectly capable of a natural explanation. Thus, to go no further back than the first century of the Christian era, we find the most wonderful narrations, alike in the writings of Pagan and Christian historians, of the doings of the Eastern sorcerers' and Jewish 'exorcists' who had spread themselves over the Roman Empire. Among these the Simon Magus slightly mentioned in the Book of Acts was one of the most conspicuous; being recorded to have gained so great a repute for his 'magic arts,' as to have been summoned to Rome by Nero to exhibit them before him; and a Christian Father goes on to teil how when Simon was borne aloft through the air in a winged chariot in the sight of the Emperor, the united prayers of the Apostles Peter and Paul, prevailing over the demoniacal agencies that sustained him, brought him precipitately to the ground. In our own day, not only are we seriously assured by a nobleman of high scientific attainments that he himself saw Mr. Home sailing in the air (by moonlight) out of one window and in at another, at a height of seventy feet from the ground; but eleven persons unite in declaring that Mrs. Guppy was not only conveyed through the air in a trance all the way from Highbury Park to Lamb's Conduit Street, but was brought by invisible agency into a room of which the doors and windows were closed and fastened, coming 'plump down' in a state of complete unconsciousness and partial déshabille upon a table round which they were sitting in the dark, shoulder to shoulder.

Of course, if you accept the testimony of these witnesses to the aerial flights of Mr. Home and Mrs. Guppy, you can have no reason whatever for refusing credit to the historic evidence of the demoniacal elevation of Simon Magus, and the victory obtained over his demons by the two Apostles. And you are still more bound to accept the solemnly attested proofs recorded in the proceedings of our Law Courts within the last two hundred years, of the aerial transport of witches to attend their demoniacal festivities; the belief in Witchcraft

being then accepted not only by the ignorant vulgar, but by some of the wisest men of the time, such as Lord Bacon and Sir Matthew Hale, Bishop Jewell, Richard Baxter, Sir Thomas Browne and Addison; while the denial of it was considered as virtual Atheism.

The general progress of Rationalism, however, as Mr. Lecky has well shown, has changed all this; and to accept any of these marvels, we must place ourselves in the mental attitude of the narrator of Mrs. Guppy's flight; who glories in being so completely unfettered by scientific prejudices, as to be free to swallow anything, however preposterous and impossible in the estimation of scientific men, that his belief in 'spiritual' agencies may lead him to expect as probable.

If time permitted, it would be my endeavor to show you by a historical examination of these marvels, that there has been a long succession of Epidemic Delusions, the form of which has changed from time to time, whilst their essential nature has remained the same throughout; and that the condition which underlies them all is the subjection of the mind to a dominant idea. There is a constitutionai tendency in many minds to be seized by some strange notion which takes entire possession of them; so that all the actions of the individual thus 'possessed are results of its operation. This notion may be of a nature purely intellectuak, or it may be one that strongly interests the feelings. It may be confined to a small group of individuals, or it may spread through vast multitudes. Such delusions are most tyrannous and most liable to spread, when connected with religious enthusiasm; as we see in the dancing and flagellant manias of the Middle Ages; the supposed demoniacal possession that afterwards became common in the nunneries of France and Germany; the ecstatic revelations of Catholic and Protestant visionaries; the strange performances of the Convulsionnaires of St. Médard, which have been since almost paralleled at Methodist 'revivals' and camp-meetings; the preaching epidemic of Lutheran Sweden; and many other outbreaks of a nature more or less similar. But it is characteristic of some of the later forms of these epidemic delusions, that they have con

nected themselves rather with Science than with Religion. In fact, just as the performances of Eastern Magi took the strongest hold of the Roman mind when its faith in its old religious beliefs was shaken to its foundations, so did the grandiose pretensions of Mesmer,-who claimed the discovery of a new Force in Nature, as universal as gravitation, and more mysterious in its effects than electricity and magnetism,-find the most ready welcome among sceptical votaries of novelty who paved the way for the French Revolution. And this pseudoscientific idea gave the general direction to the doctrines taught by Mesmer's successors; until in the supposed 'spiritualistic' manifestations, a recurrence to the religious form took place, which may I think be mainly traced to the emotional longing for some assurance of the continued existence of departed friends, and hence of our own future existence, which the intellectual loosening of time-honored beliefs as to the immortality of the soul has brought into doubt with many.

I must limit myself, however, to this later phase of the history; and shall endeavor to show you how completely the extravagant pretensions of Mesmerism and Odylism have been disproved by scientific investigation: all that is genuine in their phenomena having been accounted for by well-ascertained Physiological principles; while the evidence of their higher marvels has invariably broken down when submitted to the searching tests imposed by the trained experts whom I maintain to be alone qualified to pronounce judgment upon the matter. Nothing is more common than to hear it asserted that these are subjects which any person of ordinary intelligence can investigate for himself. But the Chemist and the Physicist would most assuredly demur to any such assumption in regard to a chemical or physical enquiry; the Physiologist and Geologist would make the same protest against the judgment of unskilled persons in questions of physiology and geology. And a study of Mesmerism, Odylism, and Spiritualism extending over more than forty years, may be thought to justify me in contending that a knowledge of the physiology and pathology of the Human Mind, of its extraordinary tendency to self-deception in regard to matters in which its

feelings are interested, of its liability to place undue confidence in persons having an interest in deceiving, and of the modes in which fallacies are best to be detected and frauds exposed, is an indispensable qualification both for the discrimination of the genuine from the false, and for the reduction of the genuine to its true shape and proportions.

And I further hold not only that it is quite legitimate for the enquirer to enter upon this study with that' prepossession in favor of the ascertained and universally admitted Laws of Nature, which believers in Spiritualism make it a reproach against men of science that they entertain; but that experience proves that a prepossession in favor of some 'occult' agency is almost sure to lead the investigator to the too ready acceptance of evidence of its operation. I would be the last to affirm that there is not much more in heaven and earth than is known to our philosophy;' and would be among the first to welcome any addition to our real knowledge of the great agencies of nature. But my contention is that no new principle of action has any claim to scientific acceptance, save upon evidence as complete and satisfactory as that which would be required in any other scientific investigation.

The recent history of Mr. Crocke's most admirable invention, the Radiometer, is pregnant with lessons on this point. When this was first exhibited to the admiring gaze of the large body of scientific men assembled at the soirée of the Royal Society, there was probably no one who was not ready to believe with its inventor that the driving round of its vanes was effected by light; and the eminent Physicists in whose judgment the greatest confidence was placed, seemed to have no doubt that this mechanical agency was something outside Optics properly so called, and was, in fact, if not a new force in nature, a new modus operandi of a force previously known under another form. There was here, then, a perfect readiness to admit a novelty which seemed so unmistakably demonstrated, though transcending all previous experience. But after some little time the question was raised whether the effect was not really due to action of heat upon the attenuated vapor of which it was impossible entirely to get rid; and