of excitation, when in fact they saw only normal and healthy play.  It is true that the power of modulated tones arouses everything most ethereal and lofty in our composition, and it must therefore be wrong to charge with extravagance any description of a life in music, which is a life in the highest, because truly it cannot be extravagant enough, since all words fail before that of which it discourses,—­while it gives you the sense of the universe and of the eternities, and is to the other arts what the soul is to the body.  And is it not, moreover, the voice of Nature, the murmur of wind and tree, the thrill of all the dropping influences of the heavens, the medium of spiritual communication, the universal language in which all can exchange thought and feeling, and through which the whole world becomes one nation?  Out of the spirit blossom spirits, Bettine tells us, and we subject ourselves to their power:  “Ah, wonderful mediation of the ineffable, which oppresses the bosom!  Ah, music!” To go further, there is certainly no exaggeration in Charles Auchester’s treatment of his hero; for, reading the contemporaneous articles of musical journals, you will find them one and all speaking in even more unrestrained profligacy of praise, recognizing in the cloud of composers but nine worthy the name of Master, of whom Mendelssohn was one, and declaring that under his baton the orchestra was electrified.  We all remember the solemnly pathetic and passionate beauty of Seraphael’s burial by night, with the music winding up among the stars; but did it in reality exceed the actual progress of the dead Master’s ashes from city to city, met in the twilight and the evening by music, gray-headed Capellmeisters receiving him with singing in the open midnight, and fresh songs being flung upon his coffin like wreaths with the sunrise?

There is a wonderful strength exhibited in the sketch of Seraphael from first to last:  not to mention the happiness of the name, of which this is by no means a single instance, and the fact of his having no pramomen, both of which so insignificant atoms in themselves lift him at once a line above the level in the reader’s sympathy,—­it was a most difficult thing to present such delicacy and lightness, and yet to preserve “the awful greatness of his lonely genius,” as somewhere else she calls it; but all must confess that it is done, and perfectly.  It is not alone in Seraphael that this strength is shown; a new mould of character in fiction is given us,—­masculine characters which, though light and airy, are yet brilliant and strong, most sweet, and surcharged with loveliness.  It is this perfect sweetness that constitutes half the charm of her books,—­for in the only one where it is deficient, “Beatrice Reynolds,” the whole fails.  One feels sure that it was never deficient in herself, that her own heart must have been overflowing with warm and cordial tenderness,—­and if any testimony were wanting, we should have it in