Even the gaiety which the comic music of Italy is so well calculated to excite, is not of that vulgar description which does not speak to the imagination.  At the very bottom of the mirth which it excites, will be found poetical sensations and an agreeable reverie, which mere verbal pleasantry never could inspire.  Music is so fleeting a pleasure, that it glides away almost at the same time we feel it, in such a manner, that a melancholy impression is mingled with the gaiety which it excites; but when expressive of grief, it also gives birth to a sweet sentiment.  The heart beats more quickly while listening to it, and the satisfaction caused by the regularity of the measure, by reminding us of the brevity of time, points out the necessity of enjoying it.  You no longer feel any void, any silence, around you; life is filled; the blood flows quickly; you feel within you that motion which gives activity to life, and you have no fear of the external obstacles with which it is beset.

Music redoubles the ideas which we possess of the faculties of the soul; when listening to it we feel capable of the noblest efforts.  Animated by music, we march to the field of death with enthusiasm.  This divine art is happily incapable of expressing any base sentiment, any artifice, any falsehood.  Calamity itself, in the language of music, is stript of its bitterness; it neither irritates the mind nor rends the heart.  Music gently raises that weight which almost constantly oppresses the heart when we are formed for deep and serious affections; that weight which sometimes becomes confounded with the very sense of our existence, so habitual is the pain which it causes.  It seems to us in listening to pure and delectable sounds, that we are about to seize the secret of the Creator, and penetrate the mystery of life.  No language can express this impression, for language drags along slowly behind primitive impressions, as prose translators behind the footsteps of poets.  It is only a look that can give some idea of it; the look of an object you love, long fixed upon you, and penetrating by degrees so deeply into your heart, that you are at length obliged to cast down your eyes to escape a happiness so intense, that, like the splendour of another life, it would consume the mortal being who should presume stedfastly to contemplate it.

The admirable exactness of two voices perfectly in harmony produces, in the duets of the great Italian masters, a melting delight which cannot be prolonged without pain.  It is a state of pleasure too exquisite for human nature; and the soul then vibrates like an instrument which a too perfect harmony would break.  Oswald had obstinately kept at a distance from Corinne during the first part of the concert; but when the duet began, with faintly-sounding voices, accompanied by wind instruments, whose sounds were more pure than the voices themselves, Corinne covered her face with her handkerchief, entirely absorbed in emotion; she