The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 68, June, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Science
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 68, June, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
I might add a long list of names, American as well as European, which
will be forever honored in the history of science for their
contributions to geology in the last half-century. But I have intended
only to close this chapter on mountains with a few words respecting the
men who first investigated their intimate structural organization, and
established methods of study in reference to them now generally adopted
throughout the scientific world. In my next article I shall proceed to
give some account of special geological formations in Europe, and the
gradual growth of that continent.
CAMILLA'S CONCERT.
I, who labor under the suspicion of not knowing the difference between
"Old Hundred" and "Old Dan Tucker,"--I, whose every attempt at music,
though only the humming of a simple household melody, has, from my
earliest childhood, been regarded as a premonitory symptom of epilepsy,
or, at the very least, hysterics, to be treated with cold water, the
bellows, and an unmerciful beating between my shoulders,--_I_, who can
but with much difficulty and many a retrogression make my way among the
olden mazes of tenor, alto, treble, bass, and who stand "clean daft" in
the resounding confusion of andante, soprano, falsetto, palmetto,
pianissimo, akimbo, l'allegro, and il penseroso,--_I_ was bidden to
Camilla's concert, and, like a sheep to the slaughter, I went.
He bears a great loss and sorrow who has "no ear for music." Into one
great garden of delights he may not go. There needs no flaming sword to
bar the way, since for him there is no gate called Beautiful which he
should seek to enter. Blunted and stolid he stumps through life for whom
its harp-strings vainly quiver. Yet, on the other hand, what does he not
gain? He loses the concord of sweet sounds, but he is spared the discord
of harsh noises. For the surges of bewildering harmony and the depths
of dissonant disgust, he stands on the levels of perpetual peace. You
are distressed, because in yonder well-trained orchestra a single voice
is pitched one-sixteenth of a note too high. For me, I lean out of my
window on summer nights enraptured over the organ-man who turns poor
lost Lilian Dale round and round with his inexorable crank. It does not
disturb me that his organ wheezes and sputters and grunts. Indeed, there
is for me absolutely no wheeze, no sputter, no grunt. I only see dark
eyes of Italy, her olive face, and her gemmed and lustrous hair. You
mutter maledictions on the infernal noise and caterwauling. I hear no
caterwauling, but the river-god of Arno ripples sort songs in the
summer-tide to the lilies that bend above him. It is the guitar of the
cantatrice that murmurs through the scented, dewy air,--the cantatrice
with the laurel yet green on her brow, gliding over the molten moonlit
water-ways of Venice, and dreamily chiming her well-pleased lute with
the plash of the oars of the gondolier. It is the chant of the
flower-girl with large eyes shining under the palm-branches in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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