GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE. Vol. XXXVII. AUGUST, 1850. No. 2. Table of Contents Fiction, Literature and Articles Music and Musical Composers The Chase The Bride of the Battle Pedro de Padilh A Romance of True Love Wordsworth Bridget Kerevan What Katy Did The Game of the Season The Fine Arts Review of New Books Poetry, Music, and Fashion Manuela Wood Violets Memories Red Jacket The Mariner’s Tale Impulse and Principle Riverside Chant of the Néreides Le Follet Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook. * * * * * [Illustration: THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine by W. E. Tucker] * * * * * GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE. Vol. XXXVII. PHILADELPHIA, AUGUST, 1850. No. 2. * * * * * MUSIC AND MUSICAL COMPOSERS. BY R. J. DE CORDOVA. ’Tis the silver key to the fountain of tears, Where the spirit drinks till the brain runs wild; The softest grave of a thousand fears, Where their mother, Care, like a sleepy child, Is laid asleep on flowers. Shelley. It were much too vast a labor to commence an inquiry into the subject of this essay, with a dissertation on the _origin of music_. Posterity may be enabled, by the aid of advanced wisdom, to explain the birth of this and other blessings which to us appear only natural, and may, perhaps, successfully trace to their sources the numerous enjoyments which God created as ministers to man’s happiness, and of which we now know only the mere existence. It will not be uninteresting to our children’s children to learn how men first discovered that the various sounds with which the Creator, in his wisdom, invested the human voice, might be linked together in wonderful combinations—producing from monotonous particles melodious unisons; and how a knowledge of the various distinctions which the extension or diminution of time confers on every distinct atom of sound, first dawned upon the human mind, appealing through the senses to the soul, and binding, with a force and power which belong not to any other immaterial agent, the heart of man in chains of amaranthine flowers. These wonders, like many more, which now, for aught we know, lie on the first unturned page of wisdom’s book, will one day be developed.