failure arises from want of practice, for practice with the pen is like practice in music, in dancing, in drawing, and every other art. Facility is universally the result of practice.

Style is less thought of now than it was formerly, because good style has become so common. The newspapers and reviews afford the very best specimens in every species, but as they afford also the worst, they are not standards for scholastic use. We used to refer to Addison, Pope, Johnson, and others, but their best specimens are now to be found in our current school-books, and I really know of no better models than Blair's Class Book, and Robinson's Abridgment of Hume and Smollet's Histories of England. Style being the gratuitous quality of our modern school-books, by using which it is simultaneously acquired with knowledge, I do not recommend any author for the mere sake of style; for let it be remarked, my object has never been to render you blue stockings, but to produce in your characters the genuine graces and accomplishments of polished society.

I should terrify you if I spoke of logic as a study at once useful and delightful, and should enlarge on Watts and Duncan. If you are studiously disposed, both these, and Euler's letters, may be read with immense advantage; but I do not think more is necessary to be known, of this once famous science for young women, than is to be found at the end of your little English grammar.

Among other books to be read at your earliest leisure, with reference at once to sentiment and style, do not neglect Knox's Essays, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Fenelon's Telemachus, Barbauld's Selections from the British Essayists, the Morning's Walk from London to Kew, St. Pierre's Indian Cottage and Paul and Virginia, Gesner's Death of Abel, Cottin's Elizabeth, Johnson's Rassellas, and Bowdler's Family Shakspeare.

*

LETTER XXXI.

Music and Sound.

MY DEAR CHILdren,

The topics discussed in the previous letters, lead us to a branch of the liberal education of females, in which, you will, from its pleasing and showy character, feel a greater interest than on many other subjects-I mean Music. Of course I do not intend to treat of the elements of this science, nor of its notation or execution, but I shall prefer to call your attention to some circumstances connected with it, of which masters and teachers do not treat, but with which it is disgraceful not to be acquainted.

Perhaps it never occurred to you, to ask yourselves, what it is you perceive when you hear a sound? What it is that is affected by the striking of the keys of your piano, or the fingering of the strings of your harp? If these questions never did occur, you ought to know that it is the air which is affected that air which you feel on passing your hand quickly through it, and which annoys you by a wind when it is in rapid motion in mass.

Sound

then, of all kinds, is an affection of this air, in which you live, just as fish live in water; and perhaps fish are as insensible of the water in which they float, as unthinking people are of the air which they breathe, which air is however as essential to their lives as water to a fish, and the excitement of which, by various methods, produces all the sounds which are so useful and so pleasing.

Every space is full of this air, and so full, that the smallest insect in the smallest crevice, finds enough of it to sustain life. Perhaps it fills every space as completely as solid gold fills the space which it occupies; but as it is perfectly fluid, far more so than solid gold when it is melted, so therefore we move freely in it. A fish seeing a piece of ice

could not believe that he lived within such a substance, yet the moment the ice is melted, the fish can freely swim in it, and from it derive the means of life. In truth, the air in which we live has been reduced to a liquid, and as such is capable of being frozen, and we should then be surprised to consider that we live in such a mass when it is restored to its aerial state. Our ears are then like the rest of our body, immersed in this continuous fluid, and if therefore the fluid or air be suitably affected or moved in one place, the affection spreads around, reaches the ear, and we become sensible of an affection which we call Sound.

The sort of affection of the air which produces this effect, is the brisk vibration or quick motion backward and forward of the strings, wires, or parts of musical instruments. These motions affect the air, they spread around in a sort of waves, they reach the ear, which is curiously contrived for the purpose, and the affection of the air thus created and thus discerned, we call sound. Quick vibrations, we call sharp, high, or acute sounds; while slow vibrations create dull sounds. The number of these vibrations is one of the most wonderful things in all wonderful nature, and the knowledge of the fact will fill you with astonishment. You know that a second of time is but the 60th part of a minute, and yet in a second of time, musical strings perform from 100 to 1600 vibrations in every second, which is the fact in regard to C, in its lowest and highest octave. If strings do not vibrate 30 times in a second, the effect is not perceivable, that is, they produce no sound cognizable by the ear; but if they vibrate oftener than 7500 times in a second, it becomes a sharp noise, and has no distinguishable tone. So that in sound the ear distinguishes up to a tone which is but the 7000th part of a second, which second is but the 60th part of a minute!

The harp consists then of strings, put into vibra

tions by the fingers; the piano of strings put into vibration by the jirk of a quill; the violin strings by the motion of the bow; the vibrations affecting the air, and the excitements of the air in cne place spreading around within a mass, so connected and continuous, reaches the drum of the ear, this affects the air-cell inside the ear, that affects the nerves spread within the cell, and these reach the brain, or seat of perception.

In wind instruments, the vibrations are produced by the action of a condensed blast of breath or wind, acting against the sides of the instrument, and the vibration of these sides, like the vibrations on strings, affect the air in the same manner.

You must not, however, forget one fact, that all strings and surfaces vibrate times in a second, in proportion as they are longer or shorter. Thus, if a string, a yard long, vibrate 100 times in a second; another, but half a yard long, will vibrate 200 times in a second; and but a quarter, 400 times in a second; and so on for all the proportions of the length, the vibrations increase as it is shorter, and diminish as is it longer. Then as the quick vibrations of short strings produce acute or shrill sounds, and the slow vibrations of long strings, dull and low sounds, we have in this variety the means of forming instruments, and it is on this principle that they are formed, and music created.

But I am afraid of wearying you, and I will therefore defer the subject till another opportunity.

**

LETTER XXXII.

Theory of Music.

MY ESTEEMED Children,

Remember that the whole art and mystery of music depends on the exact proportional division of

strings, and on the recurring display of their varied tones, in an order and variety which the fixed laws of aerial vibration and nervous affection determine to be agreeable.

As any two strings of equal length vibrate equally, so they thereby give the very same tone, and are perfect accords, or in unison But this is sound, not music, for music arises from a variety of tones tastefully combined and agreeably sounding.

If one of the strings be half the length of the other, it vibrates twice for once of the other string, it is sharper therefore in its tone; while the recurrence or coincidence being every other time, this also is a frequent accord or unison, and as the tones are different, so the effect becomes agreeable or musical. Such two sounds recurring every other time are called octaves to each other; because it is practicable by other intermediate proportions of the original string to produce six intermediates notes, and this being the 8th from the first note, is called an octave, and being shriller or sharper, is an octave higher.

In like manner, this second octave may also be divided in half, so as to produce a still higher octave; while each octave will have its six intermediate notes all subdivided in the same proportions, and all having their respective similar tones, though each is shriller or sharper, or as it is called, an octave higher than the preceding. In regard to the number of their vibrations, the first note being C, and 100 in a second; the second C is 200; the third C 400; the fourth C 800; the fifth, 1600; the sixth, 3200; and the seventh, 6400 in a second, beyond which the discrimination of the ear ceases.

The next accord is when the string is divided into three equal parts, by which 100 vibrations become 300 in each part, and the accord then takes place only at every third vibration of the original string; this is the note marked G, in the gamut, and