The long and the short of it is, perhaps, that music, being a universal art, like a universal watch-key, will set going the complicated cogs and springs of every soul and yet not regulate or assure its rhythm. Music stimulates and satisfies the mind in any of its whims, and you can tune it to a softly chanted prayer, or to a dance orgy; to a hymn of exultation, or a tinkling serenade; a kindergarten song, to the bloodthirst of armies; to voluptuous desires that cannot or dare not be worded, or to raptures distilled of every human dross; to cynical raillery, or the very throb of a young lover's heart; to the hilarity of a drinking song, or the midnight elegies of ineffable despair. How is such an art as this to compel, or to deny anything or anybody? Musicians, then, are only ordinary clay, who happened to make music, instead of other things of more or less beauty or value. They are every-day puppets of circumstance and of inner and outer environment, who might have been happier, and might have been unhappier, with the women they wed or did not wed, had those women died younger, or lived longer--or with other women, or with none at all. THE END. BIBLIOGRAPHY _Of Books Consulted and Cited in This Work_ * * * * * BAINI (GIUSEPPE). Memorie storico-critiche della vita e delle opere di G. Pierluigi da Palestrina. 2 vols. Rome, 1828. BEAUFORT (RAPHAEL LEDOS DE). Franz Lizst. The Story of his Life. Boston, 1887. BEETHOVEN'S LETTERS. See Nohl. BÉLART (HANS). Richard Wagner in Zürich (1849-1859). 2 vols. Leipzig. 1901. BELLAIGNE (CAMILLE). Portraits and Silhouettes of Musicians. Translated by Ellen Orr. New York, 1897. BELLASIS (Edward). Cherubini. Memorials illustrative of his life. London. 1874. BEYLE (MARIE HENRI). Lettres entre de Vienne en Autriche sur le célèbre compositeur Haydn, suivées d'une vie de Mozart et de considérations sur Metastasio. Pub. 1814, first under the pseudonym _L.A. Bombet_, and when exposed as a steal from Carpani (_q. v_.) republished under the pseudonym Doctor Stendahl in 1817. Published in English by W. Gardiner, 1820. BEYLE (MARIE HENRI). Vies de Haydn, de Mozart, et de Métastase. Par de Stendahl (Pseudonym). Nouvelle éd. Paris, 1854. BITTER (CARL II.). Carl Philipp Emanuel und Wilhelm Friedemann Bach und deren Brüder. 2 vols. Berlin, 1868. BONNET (JACQUES). Histoire de la musique et de ses effets, depuis son origine jusqu'à présent. Paris, 1715. BOURDELOT (Pierre), ABBÉ. Histoire de la musique et de ses effets, depuis son origine jusqu'a present. Et en quoi consiste sa beauté. 4 vols. in 1. Amsterdam, 1725. BRAY (MRS. ANNA ELIZA). Handel, his life personal and professional. With thoughts on sacred music. A sketch. 2 vols. London, 1857. BÜLOW (M. VON). The early correspondence of Hans von Bülow. Edited by his widow. Translated by C. Bache. 5 vols. London, 1900. BUSBY (MRS. THOS. D.).