Purely instrumental music, the music of a full orchestra, appealed to the commoner feelings; it served for dinners and dances, as in the banquets depicted by Veronese. It represented the voices of nature. It was best understood on the water, and then the most staid and stolid of people found it one of the joys of life. It was the delight of pleasure-loving nations: “Abolish music, and we must e’en fall to prayers.”[243] At Venice, as soon as the old cupolas, the tall statues and the long façades—decorations for a dance in motley—became blurred in the evening haze, the city seemed to swim in music: a thousand bells chimed out the _Ave Maria_; jangled sounds of serenades and concerts rose from the palaces, the alleys, every nook and cranny; the sea sent back its response; noisy parties lightly skimmed the glistening surface of the Grand Canal; illuminated barges splashed their oars under a window, with an orchestra or band of singers. Strange intoxication! Many pious Italians, like Alberto Pio, thought it so delightful that they loved to transfer it into the churches. Why not? These thrilling symphonies did not follow the sacred texts very closely, it was said; they were not always of the highest class. “You hear the boys whinnying, the tenors bellowing, the counters braying, the altos bawling, the basses scraping the bottom of a well,” and in all this the Puritans could see no trace of deep religious feeling, “no well-modulated pronunciation, the perfect enunciation which brings the words home to the soul.”[244] It was a deafening, stupefying music. But if it is necessary for our happiness that senses and emotions should be appealed to simultaneously, why say no? Even dance music may ennoble the dance and become an element of enthusiasm, peace, and joy. This was admirably expressed by one Madame de Sillé. A canon sitting beside her was laughing at the sight of men leaping about, while another was bursting his lungs blowing into a hollow stick. “What!” she said, “aren’t you aware then of the power of music? The sound from this stick penetrates the mind, the mind directs the body, and these buffooneries are the expression of the soul! Would you prefer to play at tennis?” The canon held his tongue, more especially as he caught oblique glances in his direction, and had premonitions of being dragged into the dance by way of reprisal. Even from all this racket of the dance—from the harps, lutes, organs, manichords, checkers, psalteries, rebecks, guitars, tabors, bass viols, flageolets—a measure of expression was demanded. The harpist whom Mantegna shows us setting the Muses to dance is throwing his whole soul into his work; he is leading the dance.[245]