met by kindred strains falling from the higher spheres.  The stars respond with joy to the ecstasy of liberated mortals.  The rounded fulness of the rhythm, the deliberate dignity of the graduations leading up to the outbursts of thanksgiving, and its slow return raise heavenly images in the soul.  Could you not fancy that you saw heaven open, angels holding sistrums of gold, prostrate seraphs swinging their fragrant censers, and the archangels leaning on the flaming swords with which they have vanquished the heathen?

“The secret of this music and its refreshing effect on the soul is, I believe, that of a very few works of human genius:  it carries us for the moment into the infinite; we feel it within us; we see it, in those melodies as boundless as the hymns sung round the throne of God.  Rossini’s genius carries us up to prodigious heights, whence we look down on a promised land, and our eyes, charmed by heavenly light, gaze into limitless space.  Elcia’s last strain, having almost recovered from her grief, brings a feeling of earth-born passions into this hymn of thanksgiving.  This, again, is a touch of genius.

“Ay, sing!” exclaimed the Duchess, as she listened to the last stanza with the same gloomy enthusiasm as the singers threw into it.  “Sing!  You are free!”

The words were spoken in a voice that startled the physician.  To divert Massimilla from her bitter reflections, while the excitement of recalling la Tinti was at its height, he engaged her in one of the arguments in which the French excel.

“Madame,” said he, “in explaining this grand work—­which I shall come to hear again to-morrow with a fuller comprehension, thanks to you, of its structure and its effect—­you have frequently spoken of the color of the music, and of the ideas it depicts; now I, as an analyst, a materialist, must confess that I have always rebelled against the affectation of certain enthusiasts, who try to make us believe that music paints with tones.  Would it not be the same thing if Raphael’s admirers spoke of his singing with colors?”

“In the language of musicians,” replied the Duchess, “painting is arousing certain associations in our souls, or certain images in our brain; and these memories and images have a color of their own; they are sad or cheerful.  You are battling for a word, that is all.  According to Capraja, each instrument has its task, its mission, and appeals to certain feelings in our souls.  Does a pattern in gold on a blue ground produce the same sensations in you as a red pattern on black or green?  In these, as in music, there are no figures, no expression of feeling; they are purely artistic, and yet no one looks at them with indifference.  Has not the oboe the peculiar tone that we associate with the open country, in common with most wind instruments?  The brass suggests martial ideas, and rouses us to vehement or even somewhat furious feelings.  The strings, for which the material is derived from the