of beneficent or of traitorous power,—­dance-melodies, pure and orderly, or foul and frantic,—­march-music, blatant in mere fever of animal pugnacity, or majestic with force of national duty and memory,—­ song-music, reckless, sensual, sickly, slovenly, forgetful even of the foolish words it effaces with foolish noise,—­or thoughtful, sacred, healthful, artful, forever sanctifying noble thought with separately distinguished loveliness of belonging sound,—­all these families and graduations of good or evil, however mingled, follow, in so far as they are good, one constant law of virtue (or “life-strength,” which is the literal meaning of the word, and its intended one, in wise men’s mouths), and in so far as they are evil, are evil by outlawry and unvirtue, or death-weakness.  Then, passing wholly beyond the domain of death, we may still imagine the ascendant nobleness of the art, through all the concordant life of incorrupt creatures, and a continually deeper harmony of “puissant words and murmurs made to bless,” until we reach

      “The undisturbed song of pure consent,
      Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne.”

142.  And so far as the sister arts can be conceived to have place or office, their virtues are subject to a law absolutely the same as that of music, only extending its authority into more various conditions, owing to the introduction of a distinctly representative and historical power, which acts under logical as well as mathematical restrictions, and is capable of endlessly changeful fault, fallacy, and defeat, as well as of endlessly manifold victory.

143.  Next to Modesty, and her delight in measures, let us reflect a little on the character of her adversary, the Goddess of Liberty, and her delight in absence of measures, or in false ones.  It is true that there are liberties and liberties.  Yonder torrent, crystal-clear, and arrow-swift, with its spray leaping into the air like white troops of fawns, is free enough.  Lost, presently, amidst bankless, boundless marsh —­soaking in slow shallowness, as it will, hither and thither, listless among the poisonous reeds and unresisting slime—­it is free also.  We may choose which liberty we like,—­the restraint of voiceful rock, or the dumb and edgeless shore of darkened sand.  Of that evil liberty which men are now glorifying and proclaiming as essence of gospel to all the earth, and will presently, I suppose, proclaim also to the stars, with invitation to them out of their courses,—­and of its opposite continence, which is the clasp and ‘chrusee perone’ of Aglaia’s cestus, we must try to find out something true.  For no quality of Art has been more powerful in its influence on public mind; none is more frequently the subject of popular praise, or the end of vulgar effort, than what we call “Freedom.”  It is necessary to determine the justice or injustice of this popular praise.