The decisive tone, with which Colonel Wilson, at the close of our last chapter, avowed his perfect satisfaction in De Lancaster’s explanation of Asclepiades’s receipt for quieting a mob, occasioned such a pause, as might very probably have put an end to this topic, had not the Reverend Edward Wilson availed himself of the general silence to revive it. He had been closely attentive to the progress of this whimsical dissertation, and sensibly annoyed by the frequent interruptions it had met with, whereupon, having watched his opportunity, he said--Permit me to observe, that I, for one of Mr. De Lancaster’s hearers, can never be perfectly satisfied so long as he shall be pleased to continue to us the gratification of a discourse, at once so new, and, to me at least, so highly entertaining and instructive. In several passages of it even my small share of reading enables me to recognize some of the authorities he has referred to, and I have no doubt but he is equally warranted in all others, where I am not able to follow him; and allow me to remark, that if his information does not in every point apply to the particular case of the hypochondriac lady, for whose recovery we are interested, yet even in those points of occasional aberration from the subject, there is matter well worthy of our attention, and I therefore hope Mr. De Lancaster will have the goodness to proceed with his dissertation on the effects of music, as recorded and attested by the ancient writers. Reverend sir, said Robert De Lancaster, your remarks are at once so candid, and your request so flattering to me, that I will contract what I have further to say in such a manner as shall not weary you, and I will ground it upon such authorities as shall not mislead you. Damon, the Pythagorean philosopher, a man not less to be relied upon for his veracity, than for his friendship and fidelity, by the simple recitation of the spondean hymn allayed a drunken fray in the streets of Syracuse, when raging at the height, in an instant, and as it were by magic. And pray, said the colonel, what kind of composition was the spondean hymn? It was a hymn, replied De Lancaster, performed by the priests and minstrels in the heathen temples as a prelude to the ceremony of sacrifice, and it was called spondean, as consisting of such syllables only, which gives us to understand the solemn character of the composition, the object of which was to engage the attention, and conciliate the favour of their deities, whilst the incense was in operation. If it could do that, said the colonel, and make dead idols serviceable, I can’t wonder it should make drunken insurgents sober.