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- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.842Z
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- text
- they themselves are to blame; for such people’s musical pipes are
cracked, and grown rusted, that no more music can be breathed into
their souls.”
“No, Carlo; no music like yours, perhaps,” said Harry, with a laugh.
“Ah! there’s the mistake. Though my organ is as full of melody, as a
hive is of bees; yet no organ can make music in unmusical breasts; no
more than my native winds can, when they breathe upon a harp without
chords.”
Next day was a serene and delightful one; and in the evening when the
vessel was just rippling along impelled by a gentle yet steady breeze,
and the poor emigrants, relieved from their late sufferings, were
gathered on deck; Carlo suddenly started up from his lazy reclinings;
went below, and, assisted by the emigrants, returned with his organ.
Now, music is a holy thing, and its instruments, however humble, are to
be loved and revered. Whatever has made, or does make, or may make
music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of
Persia’s horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.
Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the
high-priests tended the Jewish altars—never to be touched by a hand
profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from
a beggar’s hedge, would insult the melodious god himself.
And there is no humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a
negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest
architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a
cathedral nave. For even a Jew’s-harp may be so played, as to awaken
all the fairies that are in us, and make them dance in our souls, as on
a moon-lit sward of violets.
But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which
might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into
our inmost beings, and shows us all hidden things?
Not in a spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely
transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul
to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus
and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we
account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of
melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were
baronial halls, and our music were made by the hoarest old harpers of
Wales.
But look! here is poor Carlo’s organ; and while the silent crowd
surrounds him, there he stands, looking mildly but inquiringly about
him; his right hand pulling and twitching the ivory knobs at one end of
his instrument.
Behold the organ!
Surely, if much virtue lurk in the old fiddles of Cremona, and if their
melody be in proportion to their antiquity, what divine ravishments may
we not anticipate from this venerable, embrowned old organ, which might
almost have played the Dead March in Saul, when King Saul himself was
buried.
A fine old organ! carved into fantastic old towers, and turrets, and
belfries; its architecture seems somewhat of the Gothic, monastic
order; in front, it looks like the West-Front of York Minster.
What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies!—what
mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded
with devotional sunsets!—what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and
niches with saints!—But stop! ’tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I
live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some
interior Alhambra.
Ay, it does; for as Carlo now turns his hand, I hear the gush of the
Fountain of Lions, as he plays some thronged Italian air—a mixed and
liquid sea of sound, that dashes its spray in my face.
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