Sir--replied the expounder, (lengthening out the word into a note of something like asperity) You have not heard me out, else I should have told you, that ancient sages cured fevers, fits of melancholy, phrensy, nay, even bodily wounds, by the sanative and enchanting power of song. Who, that has but dipped into their remedies, can be ignorant, that soft airs, well executed on the flute, were found to be a never-failing cure for the sciatica, or hip-gout, as it is called? A host of witnesses conspire to testify to the truth of what I tell you. Can it have escaped the notice of any well-read scholar by what means Theophrastus found a remedy for every malady, every molestation, that could disorder and disturb the health and temperature of the human mind? Sir, he had an instrument appropriated to every mental complaint, a pipe tuned to the pitch of every passion, high or low, flat or sharp. Xenocrates brought men stark mad to their senses. Thales of Crete drove away fevers, nay, even the plague itself, by music. Erophilus regulated the pulsation of the hearts of his patients by the cadences and time-keeping of his lyre. We do that quite as correctly by our watches, said Llewellyn. De Lancaster took no notice of this, but proceeded--Can you any longer wonder that the sage, who has made sympathy his study, and is versed in the science of these harmonious modulations and their respective energies, should effect those cures, which are recorded of them, and which, when explained and understood, are no longer hard to be believed? As for what is fabled of Amphion, Orpheus and others, who by the united powers of music and legislative poetry succeeded in reforming and civilizing their barbarous contemporaries, I would not have you to suppose I cannot distinguish allegory from fact. In the same light I regard the account, which Suidas gives us of the philosopher Plato, who was reported to have been begotten of his mother in a vision by the melody of the harp of Apollo. I should be inclined to doubt that, said the colonel.