some energy and aggressive force, some stir the spirit to the most daring deeds, some, as in our maddening Tarantulas, produce a restless excitement through the whole nervous system, some excite mere joyousness, some whisper love through every fibre of the heart, and some lead us in their holy calm and unbroken order to the throne of God. Why is this? We need not look in the region of the understanding for the philosophy of that which is to be found only in the living tide of basic emotions. The pleasure we receive from Rhythm is a feeling. Alternate accentuation and non-accentuation are facts in the living organism of the universe; this may be expressed, not explained. There is an order in the living succession of musical sounds or poetic emotions, which order is expressed by the words 'equality and proportion.' These things are. What more can be said? Do comparisons help us? the waves in the eternal ocean of vitality—the shuttle strokes of the ever-moving loom of creation! Let us take it as it is, and rejoice in it. We cannot tell you why we live—let us be glad that our life is music through every heart-throb!
Rhythm is a species of natural but inarticulate language, in which the thought is never disengaged from the feeling; in language its aim should be to awaken the feeling properly attached to the thought it modulates; it should be the tune of the thought of the Poet. To write a love song in alexandrines, an idyl in hexameters, would be to incarnate the shy spirit of a girl in the brawny frame of a Hercules, to incase the loving soul of a Juliet in a gauntleted Minerva. Genius and deep sympathy with human nature can alone guide the Poet aright in this delicate and difficult path; it lies too near the core of our unconscious being to be susceptible of the trim regularity of rule—he must trust his own intuitions while he studies with care what has already been successfully done by our best poets. We may however remark in passing that if the rhythm be abruptly broken without a corresponding break in the flow of thought or feeling, the reader will be confused, because the outward form has fallen into contradiction with its inner soul, and he discerns the opposition, and knows not with which to sympathize. Such contrarieties argue want of power or want of freedom in the poet, who should never suffer the clanking of his rhythmical chains to be heard. Such causeless breaks proceed from want of truth to the subject, and prove a lack of the careful rendering of love in the author. The poet must listen to the naive voice of nature as he moulds his rhythms, for the ingenious and elaborate constructions of the intellect alone will never touch the heart. Rhythm may proceed with regularity, yet that regularity be so relieved from monotony and so modified in its actual effects, that however regular may be the structure of parts, what is composed of them may be infinitely various. Milton's exquisite poem, 'Comus,' is an example of perfect rhythm with ceaseless intricacy and great variety. It would indeed be a fatal mistake to suppose that proportion cannot be susceptible of great variety, since the whole meaning of the term has reference to the adjustment and proportional correspondence of variable properties.
The appreciation of rhythm is universal, pertaining to no region, race, nor era, in especial. Even those who have never thought about it, feel order to be the law of life and happiness, and in the marking of the proportioned flow of time and the regular accentuation of its determinate portions find a perpetual source of healthful pleasure.
If we will but think of it, we will be astonished how many ideas already analyzed we may find exhibited through rhythm. We may have: similarity, variety, identity, repetition, adaptation, symmetry, proportion, fitness, melody, harmony, order, and unity; in addition to the varied feelings of which it becomes the symbolic utterance. The Greeks placed rhythms in the hands of a god, thus testifying to their knowledge of their range and power.
Wordsworth asserts that
'More pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical compositions than in prose.'
The reason of this seems to be that the bright beams forever raying from the Divine Sun of unity and order, shine through the measured beat of the rhythm, and are always felt as life and peace, even when their golden light is broken by the wild and drifting clouds of human woe, or seen athwart the surging and blinding mists of mortal anguish.
Rhythm lurks in the inmost heart of language, accenting our words that their enunciation may be clear and distinct; lengthening and shortening the time of our syllables that they may be expressive, emotional, and musical. Let the orator as well as the poet study its capabilities; it has more power over the sympathies of the masses than the most labored thought.
Although through the quantitive arrangement and determinate accentuation of syllabic sound, rhythm may be exquisitely manifested through language, yet in music alone does it attain its full power and wonderful complexity. For the tones are not thoughts, but feelings, and yield themselves implicitly to the loving hand which would reunite them and form them into higher unities. These passionate tones, always seeking for and surging into each other, are plastic pearls on the string of rhythm, whose proportions may be indefinitely varied at the will of the fond hand which would wreathe them into strands of symmetrical beauty; while words, the vehicles of antagonistic thought, frequently refuse to conform to the requisitions of feeling, are often obstinate and wilful, will not be remodelled, and hard, in their self-sufficiency, refuse to bear any stamp save that of their known and fixed value. Like irregular beads of uncut coral, they protrude their individualities in jagged spikes and unsightly thorns, breaking often the unity of the whole, and painfully wounding the sense of order.
The true poet overcomes these difficulties. When, in the hands of a master, they are forced to bend under the onward and impetuous sweep of the passionate rhythm, compelled to sing the tune of the overpowering emotions—the chords of the spirit quiver in response. The heart recognizes the organic law of its own life: the constant recurrence of new effort sinking but to recover itself in accurately proportioned rest, rising again in ever-renewed exertion, to sink again in ever-new repose; feeling seems clothing itself with living form, while the divine attribute, Order, marks for the ear, as it links in mystic Unity, the flying footsteps of that forever invisible element by which all mortal being is conditioned and limited: Time!
'There is no architect
Can build as the Muse can;
She is skilful to select
Materials for her plan.
'She lays her beams in music,
In music every one,
To the cadence of the whirling world
Which dances round the sun.
'That so they shall not be displaced
By lapses or by wars,
But for the love of happy souls
Outlive the newest stars.'
'OUR ARTICLE.'
'John,' said I to my husband, as he came home from business, and settled into an armchair for half an hour's rest before dinner, 'I think of writing an article for The Continental Monthly.'
'Humph!' said my husband.
Now 'humph' bears different interpretations; it may argue assent, indifference, disgust, disapprobation—in all cases it is aggressive; but this 'humph' seemed to be a combination of at least three of the above-mentioned frames of mind.
Natural indignation was about taking full possession of me, but reflection stepped in, and I preserved a discreet silence. The truth is, no man should be assailed by a new idea before he has dined, and I, having had three years' opportunity of studying man nature, met my deserts when the above answer was given. So I still looked amiable, and behaved very prettily till dinner was over, and then John, having subsided into dressing gown, slippers, easy chair, and good nature, I remarked again:
'John, I think of writing an article for The Continental Monthly.'
'How shall
