Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/258

222 For they see and hear through music as through an iridescent cloud; their love grows, at it were, more distant, more touching and less oppressive: music is their only means of watching their extraordinary state of mind, and of becoming aware of it with a feeling of surprise and relief. At the sound of music every lover thinks: "It speaks of me, it speaks in any stead, it knows everything." —With the help of the artist the Germans wish to be thrown into a state of imaginary passion; the Italians to rest from their real passions; the French to have an opportunity of demonstrating their artistic taste and an occasion for discussions. Let us therefore be fair. —If we must needs have foibles, and finish by acknowledging them as laws, I would fain that everybody were endowed with at least so much artistic power as to be able, by dint of his foibles, to set off his virtues and make us desirous of them: a power which the great musicians possessed on a gigantic scale. How often do we meet in Beethoven's music with a rude, dogmatical, impatient strain; in that of Mozart with the jovial mirth of honest fellowship, when heart and mind leave