CEREMONIAL INSTRUMENTS. Bells, Chimes and Gongs are held in high esteem by the Chinese, they are indispensable in their Ceremonies and Ritual, in their Festivities, national and social. So ancient is their use that the order of their coming into existence, or the date of origin are mythical, each kind of instrument seems equally old, still they had to be accounted for in Chinese logic of history. One of the most curious traits in the character of the human animal is an unfeigned delight in super-exaggerated noise. Other animals are affrighted at noise, but the human animal makes a deliberate orgie of noise as a special means by arrangement for obtaining a sensual satisfaction of the ear. Amongst savage tribes and barbarous nations, and amongst nations emerged from barbarism well banded in social communities, everywhere we find that this sheer delight in noise, called music, is manifest and on record. Not merely called so, but dignified and accepted as music. ’Tis true that the Indian savage says his music is to frighten away devils and evil spirits, and the Chinaman tells us that his earsplitting distracting music is to make night horrible to the dragons threatening to devour the moon; but depend upon it, the devils and dragons are quite subsidiary to the main desire for indulgence in noise; and the excuse, we, perfectly well knowing the innate hypocrisy of the human animal, can complacently allow to pass. The love of noise belongs to us. Nature’s gift—like the love of art for art’s sake, is a love of noise for noise’ sake; it is only a change of phrase. We should not decry this, nor should we plume ourselves upon our civilization as freeing ourselves from this original taint of barbarism. I confess to thoroughly enjoying a thunderstorm, my nature is absorbed in an energy greater than the individual, and I revel in it. Man’s love of power is the basis of such satisfaction. Into this mood of meditation I was drawn the other evening after listening to Wagner’s “Procession of the Gods.” How the music takes hold of you, dips you in a sea of noise, and makes you feel alive all over. For this reason Wagner’s grand music is grand,—is greater than you. Your whole frame is plunged into an elemental excitement to which every nerve fibre thrills, and you feel conscious that latent impulses native to your being are awakened into activity; the barbaric strain in us responds, and exalts us beyond our conventional state. Noise or music? Well, technically we make a distinction. Ask a casuist what is the difference between virtue and vice, and he will tell you it all depends,—one may be as bad as the other. So of noise and music, one may be as bad as the other; aye, even worse. By all accounts much music is; but that may be prejudice. I have heard that some people decry Wagner’s music as a saturnalia of hubbub and noise. But it has one redeeming folly,—it lives: hence the censors, being human, often live to pardon.