There is certainly something exceedingly remarkable in the unitive powers of music. In the first place, its present popularization cannot fail to multiply the relations of men with one another, as each separate instrument, like an arithmetical figure, has an _absolute_, as well as a _relative_ value. It may not be sufficient in itself to produce _harmony_; but when placed in UNION with others, it gains a double or triple value, according to the part assigned it in a musical Whole. A single _jar_ in time or tune spoils the entire effect of the marvellous variety and order, attained in the _utter oneness_ of any good musical work. The desire to increase the limits of art, to multiply its delicious emotions, will infallibly lead those who cultivate this ethereal study to frequent reunions, in order that they may produce the Beautiful in more fulness, obtain a greater variety of effect and tone, cradled, as it must ever be in music, in the bosom of the strictest unity. Music has its own trinity, composed of Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony. _Rhythm_ is the pulse of time; the tones register its heart beats and manifest its soul, its _melody_; _harmony_ is the concurrent sympathy or antagonism elicited by its annunciation in the invisible realm in which it moves. Unity is first manifested in the rhythm; then, as the tones _consecutively_ follow each other, the succeeding one always born and growing immediately from the one just expiring, in the consequent _melody_; and lastly, as the tones progress _simultaneously_, hand to hand, and heart to heart, with the single line or passion of the melody, conditioned and responding to it in all its varied phases--(the individual and collective, the soul and its surroundings)--the grand diapason of harmony rolls on--and the magic _unity_ of music is complete! Hence, part of its power over men. But like all organic, basic life-principles, its relations with the human spirit defy analysis. Its unitive influence cannot be denied, even by those who do not feel its charm. Let them but consider that no public act of humanity implying the _primeval unity_ of the race, is considered complete without it, and they must be convinced that it is pre-eminently the art of social union. When an entire nation collects as a band of brothers to resist aggression, to repel invasion, it is music, the unitive art, which animates them to seek death itself to resist wrongs which would burden all, its very rhythm keeping in massive _unison_, _together_, the tread of thousands, causing all hearts to throb in _one_ measure, and so regulating the most heterogenous masses that they move as it were as _one_ mighty man. And in all public acknowledgments of our collective dependence as _one_ race upon the _one_ God, music alone is considered sufficiently symbolic and tender to express the universal sense of helplessness, of generic trust in His marvellous mercy.