To reap the best fruits of travel, a certain degree of enthusiasm, and something of an ideal temperament, is essential. Without them, the pains of a pilgrimage will be unalleviated, and the pleasures but feebly enjoyed. "Does he," asks an earnest writer, "who is not endowed with an enthusiastic imagination, flatter himself that he is, in any degree, acquainted with the earth on which he lives, or that he has travelled through any of its various countries? Does his heart beat at the echo of the mountains, or has the air of the South lulled his senses in its voluptuous softness?" It is chiefly through associations that travel interests, and their vividness evidently depends upon the ardor and imagination of the traveller. If these obtain, he will forget fatigue and inconvenience, lose himself at every hallowed spot, and keenly relish the least inkling of an adventure. To him a moonlight night at Venice, a sunrise from Mount Etna, a morning in the Florence Gallery or Westminster Abbey, a spartito of Rubini, an excursion on the Lake of Geneva, or a promenade in the Tuileries, will be fondly remembered long after the trials of his tour are utterly forgotten. He will rejoice in the thought of Romeo and Juliet at Verona, without vexing himself with doubts as to the authenticity of the lovers' tomb. He will conjure up the fables of antiquity while viewing the shattered temples at Agrigentum, rising with venerable grace in the twilight, and cease to grumble because the fleas disturbed his siesta. He will enjoy the picturesque street, as he is whirled over its noisy pavement by lamp-light; and chat pleasantly with the Tuscan peasant by the river side. He will kneel in the Cathedral of Milan, and suffer his soul to rise on the wings of a Catholic anthem. He will linger at a Swiss village for the sake of growing familiar with a fine prospect; and frequent the Forum at Rome, by moonlight, to over come the disappointment its appearance awakens by day. He will cultivate the society of artists notwithstanding their habiliments are grotesque, and explore a palace that attracts him, although it is not specified in the guide-book. He will tremble with joy over the good tidings from home, and gratefully receive the boon of friendship in a land of strangers. The wild expectancy of the arrival, the tearful excitement of the departure, the teeming language of new scenes and unaccustomed society, the sights, the sounds, the sensations, the thoughts and emotions-all the phenomena of a pilgrimage, will be to him a stirring and memorable experience. To him every new locality will prove an inspiration. The tomb of genius will be as a holy shrine, the mountain-top as an altar of God. The battle-ground will vibrate with the murderous pageantry of war, and the fertile valley breathe the peacefulness of Eden. He will bless Guido for renewing to his fancy the pensive countenance of Beatrice, and Salvator for instructing his eye in the wild combinations of forest scenery. He will meet Shylock on the Rialto, and hear the echoes of Tully's voice beside the temple of Jupiter. He will recognise Dr. Bellario in the dark-robed student of Padua, and the fetters of Columbus will clank in his ears, amid the narrow thoroughfares of Genoa. Chivalric legends will beguile him upon the ramparts of Malta, and he will reverently recite the Beatitudes in the olive-gardens of Palestine. The scattered grey of Mary Stuart's auburn locks will gleam before his fancy at Holyrood, and Byron's melancholy story haunt his walks at Venice. Every windmill in Spain reminds him of Don Quixote, and he will think of Cleopatra's pearl as he quaffs wine in Egypt. To him it is no mystery that the Moor drew from Desdemona a prayer of earnest heart" that he "would all his pilgrimage dilate," nor that the story: won her. All that history has chronicled, and poetry consecrated, will mingle and glow in the mind of the enthusiastic traveller. And without this warmth of fancy and moral sensibility, the experience of travel is cold and unredeemed. It is through sympathy with characters of renown or ideal beauty, that their forms are invoked, and without these radiant images to people the lonely dungeon and the silent shore, the wild glen and the modernized edifice, how unattractive would they often be! "The beings of the mind are not of clay," and he who would enjoy the associations of travel, must have learned to reverence Nature and genius, and be a lover of his race; he who would realize its best results, must be an ardent votary of improvement, and open his heart to its teachings. The light which is to throw a halo around the ruin, the picture, and the mountain, must originate in his own mind. The charm that elicits social delight, must proceed from himself. The talisman of sympathy which is to unlock the treasures of travel, must be carried in his own bosom. 60 MUSIC. And when the stream of sound Which overflowed the soul, had passed away, A consciousness survived that it had left Deposited upon the silent shore Of memory, images and gentle thoughts- WORDSWORTH. THERE is a poetry of sound, susceptibility to which is wholly independent of science. Taste for this exquisite pleasure may be cultivated to the highest degree, by those who have no musical skill, and are ignorant even of the vocabulary of the art. Perhaps, indeed, music is felt by none so much as those to whom it is a sweet mystery, a luxury never analysed, an unexplored avenue leading, at once, and by a process too enchanting to examine, into the happy precincts of the ideal world. To such minds the vagueness of music is one of its greatest charms. To them it occasions no surprise to remember that musicians were anciently deemed seers; and that even Christians followed an idolatrous example, and canonized Cecilia when the Muses were no more. They can sympathize with the monk of Catania, whose dying request it was, to be buried beneath the organ whose harmonies had so long blessed him. Like the opiumeater, they love to "construct out of the raw material of organic sound, an elaborate intellectual pleasure." They delight to lose, or rather quicken their consciousness in the inspiring atmosphere of song. "Succession," says Burke, "gives the idea of continuing on to infinity." Perhaps this accounts for the spell which music exerts over imaginative spirits. It is a magic rest. river, down which they float to the verge of the infinite. Without the definiteness of sculpture and painting, music is, for that very reason, far more suggestive. Like Milton's Eve, an outline, an impulse is furnished, and the imagination does the Anticipation, that mighty principle of happiness, is called into immediate action. Expectancy is constantly aroused. "The essence of musical feeling," says an ingenious writer, "consists in this, that we endeavor, from a sense of pleasure, to dwell on and even to perpetuate in our minds, some kind of emotion of a joyful or painful nature." Music thus seems the prelude to that perfect satisfaction, that entire expression of itself, for which the heart is ever aspiring : "The golden key That opes the palace of eternity." Viewed in this light, as a mental excitement, an element and a means of spiritual life, it is difficult to overrate the importance and interest attached to music. Although Condillac pushed the idea to absurdity, it is very evident that sensation is the grand medium of universal impression. Through this, let abstract philosophers argue as they may, men are to be most surely reached and powerfully affected. The delicate structure of the nervous system, a branch of physiology which still baffles scientific research, proves its agency to be most subtle and extensive. Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front ranks of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse. Even Dr. Johnson acknowledged the effect produced upon his mental mood by riding in a post-chaise. Schiller was indebted to champagne, and Shelley to magnetism. Coleridge was addicted to opium, and Milton loved a pipe. Far more |