Nay, resumed De Lancaster, there is no occasion to debate what nobody wishes you to believe. You cannot but perceive it is merely an allegorical compliment to the genius of that extraordinary person, whose deep researches into the mysterious theory of sounds and numbers having enabled him to speculate in a very ingenious manner upon the doctrine of harmony, as connected with the movements of the celestial spheres, and also with the human soul even after death, was feigned to have been the very offspring of that harmony, which he developed and applied. These legends, and the like of these, I know how to appreciate, and with what latitude they are to be received; at the same time I am not to be shaken in my confidence, when relying on the ancients, who studied music as a science, whilst we do little more than practise it as an art, and of course stand in the like relation to them as fiddlers do to philosophers. In short, my friends, it is not man alone that is the slave of harmony, but the whole brute creation also: if stags can be allured by the pipe; if the fishes in the Alexandrian lake will surrender themselves to the song of the fisherman; if the hyperborean swan, if the birds of the air, at once so fearful and so free; nay, if even the wild elephant of India, and the ear-stricken inhabitants of the ocean, will yield themselves up to the minstrel, who will tell me, that a mere moping hypochondriac, like my poor daughter-in-law, might not be cured of her distempered fancy by the harp of David Williams? De Lancaster having closed his argument, and dismissed his witnesses, the audience broke up; Llewellyn repaired to his patient, Edward Wilson to his pupil, and Philip whispered to the colonel, that he should be glad to have a few minutes talk with him in private. This was instantly complied with, and Philip opened the important conference, as follows-- I should wish to know, colonel, if you attended to what my father has been saying? The colonel had attended. I am glad of it, said Philip, for I was a little absent now and then, and have not carried much of it away. But do you believe all those wonderful things, that he has told us, about music? I perfectly believe that your father has told nothing about music, but what he has vouchers for, though I don’t know where to look for them. Nor I neither, Heaven knows, said Philip, for I have no taste for music, nor can distinguish between one tune and another, except as it is either loud or soft: if it is the first, it deafens and distracts me; if the latter, it puts me to sleep. I don’t suppose it is in the art of man to teach me to sing or play a single tune, though it were to save my life.