‘I am a fire-worshipper, ma’am,’ he said.  ’The God of day is the father of poetry, medicine, music:  our best friend.  See him there!  My Jenny will spin a thread from us to him over the millions of miles, with one touch of the chords, as quick as he shoots a beam on us.  Ay! on her wretched tinkler called a piano, which tries at the whole orchestra and murders every instrument in the attempt.  But it’s convenient, like our modern civilization—­a taming and a diminishing of individuals for an insipid harmony!’

‘You surely do not object to the organ?—­I fear I cannot wait, though,’ said Rosamund.

Miss Denham entreated her.  ’Oh! do, madam.  Not to hear me—­I am not so perfect a player that I should wish it—­but to see him.  Captain Beauchamp may now be coming at any instant.’

Mr. Lydiard added, ’I have an appointment with him here for this evening.’

‘You build a cathedral of sound in the organ,’ said Dr. Shrapnel, casting out a league of leg as he sat beside his only half-persuaded fretful guest.  ’You subject the winds to serve you; that’s a gain.  You do actually accomplish a resonant imitation of the various instruments; they sing out as your two hands command them—­trumpet, flute, dulcimer, hautboy, drum, storm, earthquake, ethereal quire; you have them at your option.  But tell me of an organ in the open air?  The sublimity would vanish, ma’am, both from the notes and from the structure, because accessories and circumstances produce its chief effects.  Say that an organ is a despotism, just as your piano is the Constitutional bourgeois.  Match them with the trained orchestral band of skilled individual performers, indoors or out, where each grasps his instrument, and each relies on his fellow with confidence, and an unrivalled concord comes of it.  That is our republic each one to his work; all in union!  There’s the motto for us!  Then you have music, harmony, the highest, fullest, finest!  Educate your men to form a band, you shame dexterous trickery and imitation sounds.  Then for the difference of real instruments from clever shams!  Oh, ay, one will set your organ going; that is, one in front, with his couple of panting air-pumpers behind—­his ministers!’ Dr. Shrapnel laughed at some undefined mental image, apparently careless of any laughing companionship.  ’One will do it for you, especially if he’s born to do it.  Born!’ A slap of the knee reported what seemed to be an immensely contemptuous sentiment.  ’But free mouths blowing into brass and wood, ma’am, beat your bellows and your whifflers; your artificial choruses—­crash, crash! your unanimous plebiscitums!  Beat them?  There’s no contest:  we’re in another world; we’re in the sun’s world,—­yonder!’