Indeed, that swift responsiveness of feeling which music thus awakes is a gift beyond gems of Golconda; not youth's swift effusion cheaply given and soon forgotten, but the vibration of a heart stirred in sympathy with some profound note of life, as the dyed pane stirs and quivers when the organ gives forth its deepest tones. Sentiment is a draught of old wine passing into the veins and enriching the blood, until in the generous glow all the privations and the stints of loneliness are forgotten. Pure emotion is like righteous anger, which may be lawfully indulged if the sun go not down upon it; and as he who shrinks from all fire of wrath lives but a vaporous life, so he who will never be moved is proud of a poor crustacean strength, like the limpet, winning darkness in exchange for dull stability. As for me, in the propitious hour when the heart longs for expansion, I give it honourable licence, and quicken its unfolding by spells of magical words. At such times I invoke the aid of passionate souls, not shrinking even from the vain, provided that they loved greatly and give great expression to their humanity. Such is that wild lover of George Sand whose _Souvenir_, for all its rhetoric, charms like an incantation. The ancients quenched the ashes of the pyre with red wine, as if the blood of the god-given vine could hearten the spirit that yet hovered near. Over my ashes let no wine be poured, but read me such verses high and valiant, that if my soul yet lingers undelivered from the earth's attraction it may be regenerated and set free into a braver life.