Dr. Croly, in an eloquent paragraph of his elaborate eastern romance, records how carefully music, “of all pleasures the most intellectual, that glorious painting to the ear, that rich mastery of the gloomier emotions of our nature,” was studied by the Jewish priesthood, and with a skill that influenced the habits of the country. “How often,” exclaims Salathiel, “have my fiercest perturbations sunk, at the sounds that once filled the breezes of Judæa! How often, when my brain was burning, and the blood ran through my veins like molten brass, have I been softened down to painless tears by the chorus from our hills, the mellow harmony of harp and horn, blending with the voices of the youths and maidens of Israel!” It is characteristic, as Herr Kohl observes, of music-loving Bohemia, that in the lunatic asylum of its capital, music should be considered one of the chief aids and appliances for the improvement of the patients. In addition to the garden concerts, in which all assist who can, there is chamber music—quartets, trios, etc.,—every morning and evening in the wards; and a musical director takes high rank in the official staff of the establishment. Elizabeth Charlotte of Orleans, mother of the Regent, describes in one of her letters a Madame de Persillie, well born and well bred, but a dangerous lunatic; who however, if you could but slip a guitar into her hand when the fury-fit came on, would become calm again as soon as she began to play. “I pity her greatly,” writes the good-natured duchess (whose homely German nature never became properly assimilated to the French court); “she was very fond of me, and used to address me as _Mon aimable_; but whenever she came to see me I always had a guitar quite ready for her.” It was but common prudence to be thus prepared for the worst; and when the worst came to the worst, then a guitar was best. Schleiermacher exclaims in one of his letters, “Surely, if there was any good in Saul’s innermost soul it must have been an _adagio_ that exorcised the evil spirit.” The evil spirit in question is introduced by name, Malzah, in a recent Canadian drama, and is made to avow the accomplished fact of exorcism in the following strain:— “Music, music hath its sway: Music’s order I obey, I have unwound myself at sound From off Saul’s heart, where coiled I lay.” Which snaky or serpentine similitude is akin to a passage in Mr. Browning’s “Paracelsus”—distant as the kinship between the two poems may be in other respects: “My heart! they loose my heart, those simple words; Its darkness passes, which nought else could touch; Like some dank snake that force may not expel, Which glideth out to music sweet and low.” Again and again in Shakspeare is the remedial agency of music resorted to by afflicted royalty. At one time it is Queen Katharine, fading and heartsore, who bids one of her women cease working, and sing—