Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/777

Rh , by the force of events, to suggest a modus vivendi, and that means the breaking up of the Turkish power.

The interest of Prince Milan of Servia is no longer to keep the peace unless he is quite assured that Austria will keep it for him. He is beset by watchful enemies, and his failure to do credit to his Servian name would at once lose him the support of his people. Of course Austria may promise him that she will support him on the throne against his own unruly subjects; but it is hardly likely that she can do so while her own Dalmatians are not only clamouring that she should interfere on behalf of the Herzegovinian rebels, but are actually thronging over the frontier to fight against the Turks. We do not believe that either Austria or Russia would be well pleased to have the Eastern question opened for final settlement just now, and certainly Germany would be ill pleased; but if the flame breaks out in Servia and Dalmatia, there must be an intervention to settle it. Our only business in the matter is to recognize the plain fact, that we have no interest, political or financial, to serve, in maintaining the integrity of the Turkish empire in its present form, and that we certainly shall not enter into any new guarantees for its preservation.

 

 From The Saturday Review.

exigencies of society, which demand that when people are assembled together for the space of a few hours in the relation of host and guest they must keep up a show of being interested or amused, are mercifully supported by the existence of music. The English have not, as a rule, the gift of conversation which at a French party makes all extraneous or imported forms of amusement unnecessary; one will hardly ever find in an English drawing-room that kind of pleasant river of talk, filled by auxiliary streams that flow into it without disturbing its bright current, which is a feature of French society. The state of conversation at an English assembly for social purposes might rather be said to resemble a collection of stagnant pools, whose waters require some such violent means as the throwing of a stone to rouse their surface into a semblance of activity. And music is the stone which comes most readily to hand. It is curious that an art should be turned to a use entirely opposed to its original object; that, being designed to make people listen, it should be employed to make them talk; but undoubtedly music is constantly relied upon as an instrument for this effect, and generally with success. As the person chosen to break the spell of silence frequently suffers from shyness or nervousness, an optimist might imagine that the general chatter which immediately drowns his or her efforts was caused by kindness of heart, and was intended to save the suffering caused by the performer's consciousness of becoming an object of attention. But as the same result follows when the performer is neither nervous nor shy, and is worth hearing, it must be supposed that the people who burst into talk like machines set working by the keys of the piano are moved by the mere sympathy with noise which leads parrots to chatter and whistle under the same circumstances. When the person selected to awaken the slumbering faculties of a company in this way has a real love for the art in which he dabbles, the suffering endured by him must be intense, and it is attended by a host of minor torments. For instance, he may be asked to sing, and be unable to play his own accompaniment. A volunteer, generally a lady, is found who "will do her best, but really plays so badly unless she knows the music well." That she does know it well is seldom the case, but the singer, for fear of seeming ungracious or self-important, is obliged to accept the proffered service thankfully. It may be that the accompanist is afflicted with a nervousness equal to or greater than his own, and, perceiving that he is nervous, straightway assimilates his terror, and so gives back a fresh impulse of agitation to him. In this case, although the affair has some resemblance to the blind leading the blind, the two people most interested in it have at least the comfort of being fellow-sufferers, and may find consolation in comparing notes upon their feelings and joining in contempt for those who have no knowledge of their woes or appreciation of their efforts. But it may be that the accompanist is not nervous, but is filled with a sense of duty, admirable in itself but disastrous in its consequences, which leads her to play straight through the music before her as though it were an exercise for the piano, without halting a moment in her career or otherwise taking note of the singer's existence. In 