"The music of the wind!" Why, what can be more detestable than the wind whistling through a key-hole? or singing its shrill melancholy song among the straining cordage of the storm-threatened ship? Then, uninteresting accidents happen during squally weather: hats are blown off; coat-tails, and eke the flowing garments of the gentler sex, flap, as if waging war with their distressed wearers; grave dignified persons are compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable--nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit, apparently inherent in human nature--and for which Father Adam be thanked--may very possibly lay the blame of their fickleness upon it, and bring a host of witnesses into court to testify to their general good behaviour--their calmness, and amenity, and inoffensiveness, till exposed to the evil influence of AEolus's unruly troop--the most wholesale agitators going, and never so happy as when raising a riot. N.B.--The whole tribe of zephyrs, gentle airs, and evening and morning breezes, will please to consider themselves as _not_ included under the term _wind_; to which alone, in its common-place hectoring style, this tirade is meant to apply. (We hate any thing important being popped within a parenthesis, but as the literary sin pinches us less than the immorality, we must here state what truth requires us to say--that the above, being written during a fit of the spleen, induced by the hubbub of winds and waters adverted to, must be received by the candid reader with considerable allowance.) So much for the wind, which has blown _music_ completely out of our head for a while. What a pity we did not bethink us of placing our AEolian harp in the window, before it had sunk into those short angry gusts which are now alone heard--the mere dregs of the gale; and so have drawn our inspiration from that which puffed it out! But, somehow or other, our bright thoughts generally present themselves too late to be of any use; and this is one in that predicament!