Such an instrument ought to enshrine itself in an outward frame that should correspond in some measure to the grandeur and loveliness of its own musical character.  It has been a dream of metaphysicians, that the soul shaped its own body.  If this many-throated singing creature could have sung itself into an external form, it could hardly have moulded one more expressive of its own nature.  We must leave to those more skilled in architecture the detailed description of that noble facade which fills the eye with music as the voices from behind it fill the mind through the ear with vague, dreamy pictures.  For us it loses all technical character in its relations to the soul of which it is the body.  It is as if a glorious anthem had passed into outward solid form in the very ecstasy of its grandest chorus.  Milton has told us of such a miracle, wrought by fallen angels, it is true, but in a description rich with all his opulence of caressing and ennobling language:—­

    “Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
    Rose, like an exhalation, with the sound
    Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
    Built like a temple, where pilasters round
    Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
    With golden architrave; nor did there want
    Cornice or frieze with bossy sculptures grav’n.”

The structure is of black walnut, and is covered with carved statues, busts, masks, and figures in the boldest relief.  In the centre a richly ornamented arch contains the niche for the key-boards and stops.  A colossal mask of a singing woman looks from over its summit.  The pediment above is surmounted by the bust of Johann Sebastian Bach.  Behind this rises the lofty central division, containing pipes, and crowning it is a beautiful sitting statue of Saint Cecilia, holding her lyre.  On each side of her a griffin sits as guardian.  This centre is connected by harp-shaped compartments, filled with pipes, to the two great round towers, one on each side, and each of them containing three colossal pipes.  These magnificent towers come boldly forward into the hall, being the most prominent, as they are the highest and stateliest, part of the facade.  At the base of each a gigantic half-caryatid, in the style of the ancient hermae, but finished to the waist, bends beneath the superincumbent weight, like Atlas under the globe.  These figures are of wonderful force, the muscular development almost excessive, but in keeping with their superhuman task.  At each side of the base two lion-hermae share in the task of the giant.  Over the base rise the round pillars which support the dome and inclose the three great pipes already mentioned.  Graceful as these look in their position, half a dozen men might creep into one of them and lie hidden.  A man of six feet high went up a ladder, and standing at the base of one of them could just reach to put his hand into the mouth at its lower part, above the conical foot.  The three great pipes are crowned