Page:Mrs Elwood 1843.pdf/9

Rh early life had arisen from being obliged to learn to play upon the piano, few, perhaps, felt more deeply the mental enjoyment, if it may be so termed, which arises from music, when it appeals to the heart rather than to the ear, awakening a whole host of tender and practical associations. In her "Romance and Reality," she thus illustrates her own feelings on the subject. "The love of music, like a continent, may be divided into two parts; first the scientific appreciation which depends on natural organization, and highly cultivated taste; and secondly, the love of sweet sounds for the sake of the associations linked with them, and the feelings they waken from the depths of memory; the latter is a higher tone than the former, and in the first only are we English deficient. The man who stands listening to a barrel organ, because he loves the tones 'he heard from the lips of his nurse,' or who follows a common ballad-singer, because her song is familiar in its sweetness, or linked with touching words, or hallowed by the remembrance of some other and dearer voice, surely that man has more a soul for music than he who raves about execution, chromatic runs, semi-tones, &c. We would liken music to Aladdin's lamp—worthless in itself, not so for the spirits which obey its call. We love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings, it can summon with a touch." Though she neither drew nor painted, yet with the pen she could bring the scene she described to the imagination, with a vividness that evinced she had viewed it in her mind's eye with an artist's vision, when merely perhaps the creation of her own brain. Although by no means partial to the country as a residence, yet she threw over everything she saw there the halo of her