In general, music never can have a good effect in conjunction with any composition expressive of malice, envy, peevishness, or any other dissocial passion. The pleasure of music, on the other hand, is similar to all pleasant emotions; and music is finely qualified for every song where such emotions are expressed. Music particularly in a chearful tone, is concordant in the highest degree with every emotion in the same tone; and hence our taste for chearful airs expressive of mirth and jollity. Music is peculiarly well qualified for accompanying every sympathetic emotion. Sympathetic joy associates finely with chearful music, and sympathetic pain not less finely with music that is tender and melancholy. All the different emotions of love, _viz._ tenderness, concern, anxiety, pain of absence, hope, fear, _&c._ accord delightfully with music. A person in love, even when unkindly treated, is soothed by music. The tenderness of love still prevailing, accords with a melancholy strain. This is finely exemplified by Shakespear in the fourth act of _Othello_, where Desdemona calls for a song expressive of her distress. Wonderful is the delicacy of that writer’s taste, which fails him not even in the most refined emotions of human nature. Melancholy music again is suitable to slight grief, which requires or admits consolation. But deep grief, which refuses all consolation, rejects for that reason even melancholy music. For a different reason, music is improper for accompanying pleasant emotions of the more important kind. These totally ingross the mind, and leave no place for music or any sort of amusement. In a perilous enterprise to dethrone a tyrant, music would be impertinent, even where hope prevails, and the prospect of success is great. Alexander attacking the Indian town and mounting the wall, had certainly no impulse to exert his prowess in a song. It is true, that not the least regard is paid to these rules either in the French or Italian opera; and the attachment we have to these compositions, may at first sight be considered as a proof that the foregoing doctrine cannot be founded on human nature. But the general taste for operas is at bottom no authority against me. In our operas the passions are so imperfectly expressed, as to leave the mind free for relishing music of any sort indifferently. It cannot be disguised, that the pleasure of an opera is derived chiefly from the music, and scarce at all from the sentiments. A happy coincidence of emotions raised by the song and by the music, is extremely rare; and I venture to affirm, that there is no example of it unless where the emotion raised by the former is pleasant as well as that raised by the latter.