cornua--the tuba, a trumpet so long and taper,--the concha wound by
Tritons--and eke the buccina, a short and brattling horn.
Belliston Græme was an enthusiastic musician; and was in this peculiar,
that he loved the science for its simplicity. Musicians are but too apt
to give to music's detail and music's difficulties the homage that
should be paid to music's self: in this resembling the habitual man of
law, who occasionally forgetteth the great principles of jurisprudence,
and invests with mysterious agency such words as latitat and certiorari.
The soul of music may not have fled;--for we cultivate her
assiduously,--worship Handel--and appreciate Mozart. But music _now_
springs from the head, not the heart; is not for the mass, but for
individuals. With our increased researches, and cares, and troubles, we
have lost the faculty of being pleased. Past are those careless days,
when the shrill musette, or plain cittern and virginals, could with
their first strain give motion to the blythe foot of joy, or call from
its cell the prompt tear of pity. Those days are gone! Music may affect
some of us as deeply, but none as readily!
Mr. Græme had received from Paris an unpublished opera of Auber's.
Emily seated herself at the piano--her host took the violin--Clarendon
was an excellent flute player--and the tinkle of the Viscount's guitar
came in very harmoniously. By the time refreshments were introduced,
Charles Selby too was in his glory. He had already nearly convulsed the
Orientalist by a theory which he said he had formed, of a gradual
metempsychosis, or, at all events, perceptible amalgamation, of the
yellow Qui Hi to the darker Hindoo; which said theory he supported by
the most ingenious arguments.
"How did you like your stay in Scotland, Mr. Selby?" said Sir
Henry Delmé.
"I am a terrible Cockney, Sir Henry,--found it very cold, and was very
sulky. The only man I cared to see in Scotland was at the Lakes; but I
kept a register of events, which is now on the table in my
dressing-room. If Græme will read it, for I am but a stammerer, it is
at your service."
The paper was soon produced, and Mr. Græme read the following:--
"THE BRAHMIN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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