The phenomena of music, in addition to their general interest, are truly worthy, in another respect, of our astonishment, from that striking diversity of organic power in the perception of _melody_ and still more of _harmony_ which they exhibit in different individuals, in whom all other circumstances are apparently the same,--a diversity which has often attracted the attention of philosophers, and has led even those who have no great tendency to speculation of any kind, to wonder at least, which is the first step of all philosophizing. In the present instance, however, unfortunately, this first step is the only step which philosophers have been able to take. They have been obliged to desist, after all their efforts to proceed farther, and to submit to share, and even to acknowledge that they share, the ignorance of the vulgar. If, indeed, the want of musical ear had involved either a general defect of hearing, or a general slowness of discrimination in other cases of nice diversity, the wonder would not have been great. But those, who are without ear for music, perceive as readily as others, the faintest whisper;--they distinguish like them, the faintest shades of difference in the mere articulations of sound which constitute the varieties of language, nor the articulations only, but the differences also of the mere tones of affection or displeasure, grief or gaiety, which are so strikingly analogous to the varied expression of musical feeling;--and their power of discrimination in every other case, in which the judgment can be exercised, is not less perfect. Nay,--to increase still more the difficulty,--they are often as sensible, as others, of the beauty of series of tones of a different kind; and some of our best poets and declaimers,--who of course must have had a quick discernment of metrical rhythm, and of the melody of elocution,--have yet been incapable of distinguishing the _musical_ relations of sounds, as reciprocally high or low,--the melody that results from them in certain successions, and the harmony or the discord of their union. That it depends, chiefly, or perhaps entirely, on the structure or state of the mere corporeal organ of hearing,--which is of a kind, it must be remembered, peculiarly complicated, and therefore susceptible of great original diversity in the parts, and relations of the parts that form it, is very probable; though the difference of the separate parts themselves, or of their relations to each other, may, to the mere eye, be so minute, as never to be discovered by dissection,--thus leaving, to every future race of inquirers, the same difficulty which has perplexed ourselves, and the same impossibility of overcoming it. In the sense of vision, I may remark, there is a species of defect, very analogous to the want of musical ear,--a defect, which consists in the difficulty, or rather the incapacity, of distinguishing some colours from each other--and colours