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start from as low a number of vibrations as | years after, in 1847. It is not too much to may not be positively inconvenient. say that our last great oratorio, Elijah, was composed with reference to a pitch nearly identical with the theoretical, and, indeed, that all the great composers of the first half of this century were educated at, or at about, it.

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The general adoption of the theoretical or any other uniform pitch - for uniformity is hardly less to be desired than depression

may still be postponed for a time. The difficulties attending it are very great, and it is useless to ignore them; but they are, however, great, not insuperable. They are difficulties of detail only, or, to put the matter in its simplest aspect, difficulties of pounds, shillings, and pence. How are the expenses of change to be met? How is an orchestral performer-generally the worst paid of all living artists- -to replace a costly instrument, often all but his only property? It must be borne in mind too that this is no case for bit-by-bit reform. The pitch must be lowered, much or little, at once; and it is clear that, when the time for doing this arrives, a vast number of existing instruments will have to submit to considerable modification, and many will be rendered altogether useless. Even modification will be costly; sacrifice, of course, much more so.

The theoretical pitch is so called on account of its having been assumed by almost every writer on acoustical science as the true and natural one; originally, no doubt, because of the simplicity of the numbers by which it expresses the vibrations due to the successive octaves of the lowest audible sound, these numbers being all " powers of two," - 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and so on. Whatever attraction the simplicity of this series might have for a theorist, it could not be expected to have any for practical musicians, unless the numbers themselves represented notes apt for musical practice; in other words, a pitch at which the compositions of the great vocal writers" might be executed effectively with due regard to "the capabilities and convenience of the human voice."* A pitch may be too low as well as too high; and if it could be shown that the adoption of any pitch, however philosophical, put the average vocalist to a disadvantage in executing the compositions of the great vocal writers, it would be a sufficient reason for rejecting it at once. But we have seen already supposing the opinion of one of the greatest of those great writers to be worthy of attention that the adoption of a pitch even lower somewhat than that of 512 vibrations per second could not entail any such inconvenience; seeing that it is certainly higher than the pitch in England in Handel's time, and a little higher even than the highest in Europe that of St. a few years after his death. but, on the contrary, a question affectPetersburg, which in 1771 was A 417 equal ing the pleasure, and as Handel would have to C 500. It is higher, too, than the Pari- said, "improvement," of all who love music, sian pitch of 1788, i.e., three years only and as a consequence feel kindly towards before the death of Mozart; and but a few its practitioners, and somehow or other, vibrations lower than the Viennese pitch, sooner or later- the sooner the betterin 1834,-when Schubert had been dead it will be carried. Where there's a will six years, Beethoven seven, Weber eight, and Hayden twenty-five; when Schumann had attained the age of twenty-four, Mendelssohn twenty-six, Meyerbeer forty-two, and Spohr fifty-one. Finally, it is but a few vibrations (practically inappreciably) lower than the pitch-if the unanimous testimony of innumerable tuning-forks is worth anything-which regulated the Philharmonic Society of London from 1812 to 1842, at whose concerts many of the best works of Mendelssohn had been performed, before the last of these years, under his direction. His brilliant career, as is well known, was prematurely closed only a few

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"The voice," said one of the greatest singers and best practical musicians of the age, Madame Goldschmidt-Lind, at one of the meetings of the Society of Arts-"The voice is the pitch."

But we have all of us seen greater difficulties than these tided over. Let it be shown that this is no mere personal question-no matter of convenience to particular performers, great or small, old or young

there's a way.

JOHN HULLAH.

From The Spectator, 27 March.

THE DETHRONEMENT OF THE FUR KINGS.

THERE is power left somewhere in this Constitution of ours, though it is occasionally hard to know where to find it. It is very difficult sometimes to get a very little thing done well, but then it is not much more difficult to get an immense thing done admirably. The machine is so big that it takes endless fuel to put it in motion at all; but once in motion, it can do almost any kind of work. If we have to march a regiment of cavalry from London to Hounslow we generally make some mess, leave the

strangest of constitutional phenomena, - may be ruling a territory in which the mother country would not make a province, a country greater in size, in population, in revenue, and, for aught man knows, it may be in resources, than the United States when they commenced the career that has led them to the top of the world.

men without rations, or disable half the attractive force, and colonies are tumbling horses, or commit some betise of that kind; into it as little planets would into the sun, but if we have to reconquer India, we re-if the sun's attractive force were suddenly conquer it with very little more apparent quintupled. Newfoundland is yielding, effort. A hundred or so convicts in New British Columbia is drifting, and last and Zealand, or a few thousand Kaffirs in South most important of all, the Hudson's Bay Africa, seem to tax all our energies; but Territory, the largest on the continent, is an effort not a bit more exhaustive des- fast floating towards the centre of gravity troys a dozen armies supported by a conti- at Ottawa. Yet a few months, or it may be nent in rebellion, or plucks down an Afri- a few weeks, and a dependent Parliament, can King from his throne near the Mountains of the Moon. More has been said and more trouble taken about the Thames Embankment than about the Indian Railway System, and the Government which is bothered by garotters strikes down pirates almost by volition. At this moment, the Colonial Office, supposed to be the weakest among all our Departments, The process by which this last obstacle which gets puzzled with any little intercol- has been removed is an amusing illustration onial squabble about tariffs, looks solemn of the methods by which British politicians when a Legislative Council at the Antipodes pursue their ends. It was, to speak shortly, quarrels with a Legislative Assembly about a State necessity that the Hudson's Bay a money bill, and is fretted to death by the Territory should be added to the Dominion, perversities of a silly African Bishop, is that the stomach of British America should silently and quietly completing one of the be placed under the control of the brain. biggest enterprises ever undertaken by The Dominion hungered after it, to begin statesmen, building up across the Atlantic a with, and our policy was to feed the DominFederal Republic strong enough to hold its ion even to satiety. The United States' own among the nations of the world, with a people were threatening it, and to loosen territory second in area only to that of their talons when once fleshed is as difficult Russia, with an army based on conscription, and dangerous as to loosen our claws. and a marine surpassing that of many first- Above all, it was necessary to a plan which class powers. Nobody chatters about it, involves the security of the whole Empire, scarcely any outsider looks at it, nobody and it may be of the whole world, the cresings pæans over it; but steadily as a tree, ation of a Second State on the American silently as the Temple of Solomon, the Continent. There were no inhabitants to Canadian Dominion rises into the air. object, no enemies to be subdued, no grand Whoever hit upon that word for the New feats of diplomacy to be achieved, there was State, with its curious suggestion and yet only a little known and not very powerful avoidance alike of royalty and republican- Company, seated in Fenchurch Street, to be ism, so large in its significance and yet so got out of the way. A body of utterly unfree from pomp, had a genius for words. known shareholders, changing from day to The attempt at first seemed hopeless, but day, and politically quite insignificant, posthe British Government had made up its sessed or said they possessed sovereign and mind, and quietly, carefully, without fuss or property rights over four hundred millions proclamation, it availed itself of its own of square miles of the earth's surface, with apparent disadvantages, of the shadow right of shutting anybody out whom they thrown by its terrible neighbour, of British might please. A Stuart ignorant of geoCanadian overbearingness, of French Can-graphy had signed a document he never adian suspiciousness, of Nova Scotian 'cute-read for the benefit of somebody who sold ness, of New Brunswicker avarice, and of it again, and so the purchasers became Newfoundland poverty, coerced here, and monarchs among men. The claim was so cajoled there, and bribed when nothing else ludicrously big that it killed itself, as a claim would do, till difficulties seemed to disappear, and the Dominion stood up not only a State, but a great one, with a strong political pulse, and a government which dare hang, and a good, healthy instinct of Imperialism, shown in the usual way of an insatiable lust for land. So great is the new creation, that it is exerting already an

to the air would; but to the last minute of his life the ablest man the Company ever secured, the late Mr. Edwin Ellice, never would say clearly what he thought, or his constituents thought, or he thought they thought the precise extent of their claim. There were men among them down to Wednesday last who believed themselves en

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titled to sell the Territory in full property | £300,000 in cash is not too much, or the and sovereignty to the United States as shares would not have fallen on 'Change, Napoleon sold Louisiana, or Spain Florida; the lands conceded at once are small, only and the most moderate of them, moder- 50,000 acres in all, and we fancy keen ate, sensible, citizens, like Mr. American "pre-emptors "would be sorry Bonar, -evidently thought that they were to give two-pence an acre for the future entitled to treat with the British Govern- rights of reservation. If Canada does not ment on strictly equal terms, and talked grow they will not be worth anything, and about "vested rights" as if the Territory if Canada does, who is to enforce them? had been an acre in St. Pancras. A conti- Suppose Canada conquered or independent nental government met in such a plan by in ten years, how much will Fenchurch such pretensions would have quietly de- Street get? At the same time, the terms clared that the matter was political, that considered as compensation to subordinate sovereignty was a relic of bad shareholders are not unjust, for though the times, and wherever its flag flew it ruled shares had previously been inflated by hopes directly and for all purposes. The British and ideas, they have fallen very little, the Government, however, is milder in its pro- Company retains its hunting grounds, and cesses. It first of all, through successive if the animals are killed off by those pests Secretaries of State, whittled away the of the hunters, human beings, the price of claim to ultimate sovereignty, arguing that furs will rise in proportion, furs, like gems, the King could not grant it, or the Com- being worn mainly as evidence of wealth, pany receive it, and what it had received and there are new markets rising every day could be taken away, like the similar at their very doors. The shareholders are sovereignty of the East India Company, by selling their real properties at a fair if Act of Parliament; then it forbade, through moderate price, and as for their dream Lord Granville and by a mere incidental properties, they are in this logical dilemma. remark in a letter, the sale of the Territory Either their rights are real or unreal. If to the Union: and then it offered a quiet the latter, they are trying to impose on the ultimatum. The Territory for political Government; if the former, they are sovreasons must go to Canada. The Company ereigns, and like sovereigns must accept the could have its trade as at present, certain results of revolution. Their rights to sov“blocks," i. e., scattered properties round ereignty are, at all events, not better than and about its stations, to the extent in all of those of the East India Company, which 50,000 acres, £300,000 down, and one- disappeared in a day, and their rights of twentieth of all the land to be settled territory are pretty much the same as within the next fifty years, but it must those of the Indians they supplanted. formally surrender all its assumed sovereign If the matter is to be settled on "legiand territorial rights. If it does not, inti-timate princples, or with reference to mates Lord Granville, in his sweetest man- anything but the general welfare of the ner, we shall with the greatest reluctance, world, the rightful owners of the Hudbut still immediately take them. That is son's Bay Territory are the Hudson's Bay the meaning of his very carefully worded Company's despised Indian hunters. Reremarks about the necessity of legislation to membering that and the reluctance of the avert a political danger, and is to be read Canadians to respect their monopoly, and by the light of the Indian Act of 1858, the difficulty of restraining American squatwhich deprived a Company of a Continent ters, and the impossibility of a British without a sixpence of compensation. The Government tolerating the existing absence Government of Great Britain is mildness of law in the territory any longer, and the itself in its methods, but when it comes to surrendering an imperial policy, alienating a splendid colony, and risking a war with the United States because a few Londoners think they ought to be sovereigns of territories they cannot use, and which in their hands are worth nothing, its real action is sure to be firm. The terms, we admit, are by no means "liberal," and we do not wonder at all that people who think they are selling a Continent hardly deem themselves presumptuous in asking for more.

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determination of everybody to make the
Dominion a defensible state, we should re-
commend the shareholders to accept the
terms as good-temperedly as they can.
not, the Crown will cede its rights to the
Legislature of Ottawa, Canadian lawyers
will interpret those rights, and the Com-
pany will find that their entire income will
not be equal to the costs of their perpetual
lawsuits. The Crown, be it remembered,
pays no costs.

From The Spectator, 27 March. DEBATE ON THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION.

MR. BRIGHT answered Sir S. Northcote in a speech which we should as soon think of analyzing as of analyzing a grand lyric. The smelted earnestness which is the basis of his oratory was never so conspicuous, and as he closed his superb peroration with the assertion that the disposal of the surplus realized his highest ideal of Christianity, and with the expression of his confidence that the Supreme would bless a measure founded on the "justice and mercy which are the attributes of His eternal reign," members held their breath with admiration and awe. For the first and last time in the debate a speaker sat down amidst ringing

cheers from both sides.

ror of connecting a Christian Church at all with the inheritance of violence and conquest, his contempt for the preference evinced for men of birth and culture as preachers of the Gospel in a Church of which it was once said that "not many noble, not many mighty are called," and his profound and vivid feeling that the application of the endowments to the support of the insane, the halt, and the blind, in a country where all the more refined charities are neglected on the ground of poverty, is an infinitely more Christian application of them than their application to any controversial purpose, or to any sectarian monopoly in a land cursed by religious animosities. That it was Christian in the highest sense to strip away every sign of Protestant conquest, and to substitute a beneficence which knows no creed for any species of dogmatic partiality, he evidently felt to the bottom of his heart, and engraved that feeling by the most glowing language on the somewhat obtuse perceptions of the House of Commons.

Mr. Gladstone did not rise to reply till a quarter-past one, but when he did, rose with as much fire as if he had not been listening closely to seven or eight hours of the most wearisome debate. We have Mr. Gladstone's final reply, more even spoken of the substance of his speech else- than the great and marvellous speech in where. The peroration, which, owing to which he moved the first reading of the Bill, the late hour, was badly reported, was and which was necessarily taken up with exceedingly striking. It was for the inter- administrative detail, laid open his heart est of all, he said, that the Irish Establish- about the root of Irish disaffection. He ment should not be kept in a prolonged shrinks from all conclusions which involve agony. "As that clock's hand moves "an indictment against a nation" as malign, rapidly towards the dawn, so are rapidly impossible, and absurd. If the Irish are flowing out the years, the months, the days ungovernable by us, it is because the crimes that remain to the existence of the Irish or blunders of our Government have reEstablished Church." We were not now, as some speakers had said, just opening this question. It was opened and greatly advanced in the last Parliament, pushed on before the new constituencies, forwarded a great stage when the triumphant results of the elections became known, brought on towards the end when the late Government gave up office and chose a less responsible position from which to carry on a more desultory warfare. "Another blow," he concluded, "will now be struck in the same good cause, and I will not intercept it one single moment more."

Mr. Bright never enters into his opponent's state of mind, - scarcely even knows what the process means. But no speaker in the House is so successful in giving a true picture of deep personal feeling in relation to political questions, partly because few really feel so deeply about them, partly because still fewer have the art of painting what they feel so finely. Mr. Bright did get the House to realize adequately his hor

volted them, not because they are intrinsically ungovernable. To assume that all the fault is in the people and all the reason in the Government is, as Mr. Gladstone holds, to suppose what is not only against all the laws of probability, but still more against that religious instinct which assumes that all true national life tends to stimulate the nobler qualities, and to restrain the ignoble qualities, common to those who make up the nation. Mr. Gladstone asserted the moral right of the nation to predominance over any of its parts, in answer to Sir Roundell Palmer, with a force which showed how deeply he had realized the authority of national sentiment; and he asserted the moral right of the Irish section of the United Kingdom to be governed so as to make it clear that its life is not antagonistic, but supplementary to that of England and Scotland, against Mr. Gathorne Hardy, with a force which showed how deeply he had realized that we must still be recklessly alienating Irish national sentiment in order to be hated as we are. magnificent close of his speech, in which

The

he boldly welcomed the accusation of rob- | conduct daily, or for that matter weekly, bery and bribery from an opponent usually papers for a month, to suffer the hourly so moderate as Sir Stafford Northcote, as bombardment of accusing, insulting, or showing that the Government had both thoroughly done their work, and yet done it in a sincerely conciliatory spirit, gauged his tenacity of purpose and the depth of his own religious conviction of the rectitude of his policy with a force that thrilled the House and produced an effect almost magical. It is curious that Mr. Disraeli's prediction that an era is at hand when religious faith will have a far greater influence on politics than hitherto, should have been partially fulfilled in the course of the very debate which he opened; but fulfilled only by a handful of men, two of whom, at least, were adopting the policy which he branded as irreligious, and the third of whom took up an ambiguous position between the opposing ranks.

From The Spectator.
PROFESSIONAL JEALOUSIES.

whining letters which is one of the enjoyments of that position. They would very soon get case-hardened, and still sooner come to the conclusion that the majority of mankind are with respect to their own merits and demerits such captious idiots that their comments on anything affecting themselves are not worth the trouble of reading, much less of answering them. Thin-skinned as most men are, however, there seems to be an extra quantity of jealousy and solicitude about character among great lawyers which it is not very easy to account for. That men whose profession it is to make imputations, to compel innocent witnesses to look like scoundrels, and generally to unveil the weak places of human nature, should resent charges on themselves, however slight, with acrid energy is natural; but why should they hate each other so? The old rule about two of a trade is not sufficient to explain it all, for in many trades their professors stick together very fraternally. LORD ST. LEONARD'S pamphlet review- Attorneys, especially in a capital, are rareing Lord Campbell's lives of Lords Lynd- ly rivals, and doctors keep up an etiquette hurst and Brougham is amusing in a way. of brotherhood which not infrequently It shows how very human Law Lords are. involves positive wickedness. There is Their business for the most part of their lives scarcely a physician in England who would is abuse either of each other, or of the not let his dearest friend remain ill for life unhappy witnesses who fall into their rather than tell another practitioner, — whom clutches, or of Parliamentary opponents, he knows to be a fool, that he was killor of judges who will not do as they are ing his patient by inches, or expose to the bid, but they never seem to acquire any patient himself the incompetence of his comfortable thickness of skin. Lord Camp-attendant. Soldiers manage to live tobell, a Scotchman, intent on getting on, gether very frankly, and are apt to be very not renowned for scruples, and not, one boastful about each other's feats; and would have thought, particularly sensitive, civil servants, though jealous and overseems to have cherished slighting remarks eager about promotion, rarely indulge in for years, and to have taken the trouble to personal antipathies. Indeed, in almost prepare a book which he could not expect all "Services" the hierarchical character to see in print, in order, after his death, to of the organization, by making obedience a give as much pain, not to his detractors, duty, deprives subordination of its pain, but to his detractors' admirers, as should to the material decrease of opportunities compensate his own ghost for the rubs it for hate. Engineers are very critical of had suffered in the flesh. Lord St. Leon- each other's works, but capable of a genuard is not quite so revengeful; but after a ine admiration for any professional success; life of strenuous and very successful battle and clergymen, unless violently opposed with the world, he cannot stomach being as to theological opinion, tend rather to be called "petulant though learned Sugden," cronies. When so opposed they fight hard and writes a clever little book to prove that enough, and are less measured in language his nicknamer was in the habit of telling than any equally educated class of men, fibs. We dare say he was, but the fibs do but then they take hard words without very not tell very heavily against his foes, and conspicuous wincing. It is ridicule which we really should like, just as an exercise of tries their tempers. The average clergydiscipline, to have compelled him and his man is apt to think there is something present antagonist and most other recent sacred about himself as well as about his law lords, not excluding the stately Lord message, and takes sarcasm much as lowerChelmsford and the logical Lord Cairns, to class Englishmen take " chaff" from their

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