Music, of all arts, gives the most universal pleasure, and pleases longest and oftenest. Infants are charmed with the melody of sounds, and old age is animated by enlivening notes. The Arcadian shepherds drew pleasure from their reeds; the solitude of Achilles was cheered by his lyre; the English peasant delights in his pipe and tabor; the mellifluous notes of the flute solace many an idle hour; and the charming of snakes and other venomous reptiles, by the power of music, is well attested among the Indians. "Music and the sounds of instruments," says Vigneul de Marville, "contribute to the health of the body and mind; they assist the circulation of the blood, they dissipate vapours, and open the vessels, so that the action of perspiration is freer." The same author tells a story of a person of distinction, who assured him, that once being suddenly seized with a violent illness, instead of a consultation of physicians, he immediately called a band of musicians, and their violins acted so well upon his inside, that his bowels became perfectly in tune, and in a few hours were harmoniously becalmed. Farinelli, the famous singer, was sent for to Madrid to try the effect of his magical voice on the king of Spain. His Majesty was absorbed in the deepest melancholy; nothing could excite an emotion in him; he lived in a state of total oblivion of life; he sat in a darkened chamber, entirely given up to the most distressing kind of madness. The physicians at first ordered Farinelli to sing in an outer room; and for the first day or two this was done, without producing any effect on the royal patient. At length it was observed, that the king, awakening from his stupor, seemed to listen; on the next day tears were seen starting from his eyes: the day after he ordered the door of his chamber to be left open, and at length the perturbed spirit entirely left our modern Saul, and the _medicinal_ music of Farinelli effected what medicine itself had denied.