Of the wonders, which were said, in ancient times, to have been performed, on the mind and body, by a judicious adaptation of musical sounds, to the nature of the particular case, intellectual, moral, or corporeal, I might read many histories to you, from the original authors, which would perhaps not be less truly ludicrous in the serious gravity of their narration, than in the affected solemnity of the fictitious personage whose speech I am about to quote. The experiment with which the quotation closes is, it must be allowed, a very powerful one, and certainly could not have been more successful, in the hands of Timotheus himself. “The bare mention of _music_ threw Cornelius into a passion. ‘How can you dignify,’ quoth he, ‘this modern fiddling with the name of music? Will any of your best hautboys encounter a wolf now-a-days with no other arms but their instruments, as did that ancient piper Pythocaris? Have ever wild boars, elephants, deer, dolphins, whales, or turbots, shewed the least emotion at the most elaborate strains of your modern scrapers, all which have been, as it were tamed and humanized by ancient musicians? Whence proceeds the degenerancy of our morals? Is it not from the loss of ancient music, by which (says Aristotle) they taught all the virtues? Else might we turn Newgate into a college of Dorian musicians, who should teach moral virtues to those people. Whence comes it that our present diseases are so stubborn? whence is it that I daily deplore my sciatical pains? Alas! because we have lost their true cure, by the melody of the pipe. All this was well known to the ancients, as Theophrastus assures us, (whence Cælius calls it _loca dolentia decantare_) only indeed some small remains of this skill are preserved in the cure of the Tarantula. Did not Pythagoras stop a company of drunken bullies from storming a civil house, by changing the strain of the pipe to the sober spondaeus? and yet your modern musicians want art to defend their windows from common nickers. It is well known that when the Lacedaemonian mob were up, they commonly sent for a Lesbian musician to appease them, and they immediately grew calm as soon as they heard Terpander sing: Yet I don't believe that the Pope's whole band of music, though the best of this age, could keep his holiness's image from being burnt on a fifth of November.’ ‘Nor would Terpander himself,’ replied Albertus, ‘at Billingsgate, nor Timotheus at Hockley in the Hole, have any manner of effect, nor both of them together bring Horneck to common civility.’ ‘That's a gross mistake,’ said Cornelius, very warmly, ‘and to prove it so, I have here a small lyra of my own, framed, strung, and tuned after the ancient manner. I can play some fragments of Lesbian tunes, and I wish I were to try them upon the most passionate creatures alive.’--‘You never had a better opportunity,’ says Albertus, ‘for yonder are two apple-women scolding, and just ready to uncoif one another.’ With that Cornelius,