tion. Emotion, not thought, is the sphere of music; and emotion quite as often precedes as follows thought. Although a thought will often, perhaps always, produce an emotion of some kind, it requires a distinct effort of the mind to fit an emotion with its appropriate thought. Emotion is the atmosphere in which thought is steeped, -that which lends to thought its tone or temperature, -that to which thought is often indebted for half its power. In listening to music we are like those who gaze through different coloured lenses. Now the air is dyed with a fiery hue, but presently a wave of rainbow green, or blue, or orange, floats by, and varied tints melt down through infinite gradations, or again rise into eddying contrasts, with such alternations as fitly mirror in the clear deeps of harmony the everchangeful and subtle emotions of the soul. Can any words express these? No! Words are but poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. Where all words. end, music begins; where they suggest, it realizes; and hence the secret of its strange, ineffable power. It reveals us to ourselves-it represents those modulations and temperamental changes which escape all verbal analysis-it utters what must else for ever remain unuttered and unutterable-it feeds that deep, ineradicable instinct within us of which all art is only the reverberated echo, that craving to express, through the medium of the senses, the spiritual and eternal realities which underlie them! Of course, this language of the emotions has to be studied like any other. To the inapt or uncultured, music seems but the graceful or

forcible union of sounds with words, or a pleasant meaningless vibration of sound alone. But to him who has read the open secret aright, it is a language for the expression of the soul's life beyond all others. The true musician cares very little for your definite ideas, or things which can be expressed by words-he knows you can give him these; what he sighs for is the expression of the immaterial, the impalpable, the great "imponderables" of our nature, and he turns from a world of painted forms and oppressive substances to find the vague and yet perfect rapture of his dream in the wild, invisible beauty of his divine mistress!

Although music appeals simply to the emotions, and represents no definite images in itself, we are justified in using any language which may serve to convey to others our musical impressions. Words will often pave the way for the more subtle operations of music, and unlock the treasures which sound alone can rifle; and hence the eternal popularity of song. Into the region of song Schubert found himself forced almost against his will. He could get himself heard in no other, and this, after all, proved to be the sphere in which he was destined to reign supreme. His inspirations came to him in electric flashes of short and overwhelming brilliancy. The white-heat of a song like the "Erl King," or "Ungeduld," must have cooled if carried beyond the limits of a song. Nowhere is Schubert so great as in the act of rendering some sudden phase of passion. Songs like "Mignon" and "Marguerite Spinning" remind one of those miracles

of photography where the cloud is caught in actual motion-the wave upon the very curl. Schubert was always singing. The Midas of music, everything dissolved itself into a stream of golden melody beneath his touch. All his instrumental works are full of melodies piled on melodies. We need not wonder at the number of his songs. He began by turning every poem he could get hold of into a song, and had he lived long enough he would have set the whole German literature to music. But he who, like Coleridge, is always talking, is not always equally well worth listening to. Schubert composed with enormous rapidity, but seldom condensed or pruned sufficiently, and his music sometimes suffers from a certain slipperand-dressing-gown style, suggestive of a man who was in the habit of rising late, and finishing his breakfast and half-a-dozen songs together. His warmest admirers cannot be quite blind to an occasional slovenliness in his accompaniments; but, like Shelley, he is so rich in his atmospheric effects that we hardly care to look too nearly at the mechanism. His songs may be divided into seven classes. We can do no more at present than barely enumerate them, pointing out specimens of perfect beauty in illustration of each. We quote the "Wolfenbüttel" Edition, in five vols.. edited by Sattler. The first number refers to the volume, the second to the page.

I. Religious "Ave Maria," ii. 248; "The Young Nun," ii. 222. II. Supernatural—“ The Double,” v. 183; “The Ghost's Greeting.'

iii. 431.

III. Symbolical-"The Crow," ii. 409; "The Erl King," i. 2.

IV. Classical "Philoctetes," iv. 97; Eschylus," iv. 125.

V. Descriptive "The Post," ii. 406; "A Group in Tartarus," i. 112. VI. Songs of Meditation "The Wanderer," i. 20; "Night and Dreams," ii. 225.

VII. Songs of Passion-" Mignon," iv. 176; "Thine is my Heart," i. 132; "By the Sea," v. 181; "Anne Lyle," ii. 348.

Notwithstanding the opinion of an illustrious critic to the contrary, we must be allowed to doubt whether Schubert ever reached his climax. Those works of his latest period not manifestly darkened by the shadow of approaching death-e.g. "Seventh Symphony" and "A minor Sonata"-bear the most distinct marks of progress; and during the last year of his life he had applied himself with vigour to the study of Bach, Handel, and the stricter forms of fugue and counterpoint. What the result of such severe studies might have been upon a mind so discursive, we can only conjecture. He might have added to his own richness more of Beethoven's power and of Mendelssohn's finish; but in the words of Schumann, "He has done enough ;" and as we take a last glance at the vast and beautiful array of his compositions, we can only exclaim again with Liszt, "Schubert!-Schubert, le musicien, le plus poète qui fut jamais!"

HAT SCHUBERT was to Song, CHOPIN was to the Piano; but whilst the genius of Schubert ranged freely over every field of musical composition, that of Chopin was confined within certain narrow limits. Borne into the mid-current of

that great wave of Romanticism first set in motion by Schubert, he was destined, with the aid of Liszt and Berlioz, to establish its influence permanently in Paris. Paris at once so superficially brilliant and so pro