When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will understand me to mean--_for music_.--To say that this heart never melted at the concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel.--"_Water parted from the sea_" never fails to move it strangely. So does "_In Infancy_." But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman--the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appellation--the sweetest--why should I hesitate to name Mrs. S----, once the blooming Fanny Weatheral of the Temple--who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats; and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a passion, that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that absorbing sentiment, which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and subdue his nature quite, for Alice W----n. I even think that _sentimentally_ I am disposed to harmony. But _organically_ I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising "_God save the King_" all my life; whistling and humming of it over to myself in solitary corners; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached. I am not without suspicion, that I have an undeveloped faculty of music within me. For, thrumming, in my wild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlour,--on his return he was pleased to say, "_he thought it could not be the maid_!" On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted on _Jenny_. But a grace, snatched from a superior refinement, soon convinced him that some being,--technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed from a principle common to all the fine arts,--had swayed the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less-cultivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. I mention this as a proof of my friend's penetration, and not with any view of disparaging Jenny. Scientifically I could never be made to understand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music is; or how one note should differ from another. Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of _that_ which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to _say_ I am ignorant of I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. _Sostenuto_ and _adagio_ stand in the like relation of obscurity to me; and _Sol_, _Fa_, _Mi_, _Re_, is as conjuring as _Baralipton_.