Music is not only, in itself, the most delightful, and rapturous; the most animating, inspiring, and divine of all the arts, but it may be said to be the soul of all the rest. He who never felt moved by the concord of sweet sounds, never possessed a genius for any art whatever. The beauties of poetry and painting unfold their charms by degrees, and expand with the expansion of taste and knowledge; but music requires no antecedent culture of the mind to make us capable of perceiving and recognizing its divinity. It seizes upon us at once, and makes us beings of another world. It speaks a language which no man understands, but which all men feel. The Frenchman and the Englishman, who stare at each other with unmeaning countenance, each incapable of divining what the other labours to communicate, brighten immediately into rapture at the inspiring voice of music, and assume so intelligent and animated an expression, that they seem to understand each other perfectly. Indeed it exercises a much stronger and powerful influence over the uncultivated and savage mind than over po

lished society, though it is only in civilized nations that the art itself has been cultivated and brought to perfection.

It may appear, indeed, a phenomenon in the laws of nature that, if music be an art, it should afford more pleasure to those who are immediately placed under the dominion of nature, than to those who are governed, almost in every thing, by the rules and principles of art; but this phenomenon will cease to be surprising, or, rather, it will cease to be considered a phenomenon, when we reflect, that to study and become acquainted with the principles of music, is only to study and become acquainted with those properties or laws of nature, that please us through the operation of sounds that harmonize with each other. The moment these sounds are produced, the pleasing and rapturous effect takes place; but though they are simple natural sounds, what study and attention does it require to get acquainted with them! If men were so highly gifted by nature as to produce these sounds instinctively, music would cease to be called an art; and it is therefore only our igno.

rance of them, and the necessity of being taught them by those who are already acquainted with them, that leads us to call it an art. There is, consequently, nothing of art in music but the art of getting acquainted with nature, and our ignorance of music is only our ignorance of certain properties or laws of nature. That music, therefore, though termed an art, should exercise a more powerful influence over the simple children of nature, than over those who are governed altogether by the adventitious rules and usages of artificial society, is natural; for an attention to adventitious usages being an attention to that which has no foundation in nature, must unavoidably lessen the influence which nature, if we are left solely to her guidance, would necessarily exercise over us, and consequently render us, in a great degree, the creatures of artificial habits. I call the manners and usages of polished society adventitious, because they are produced by chance or caprice, different in different nations, and eternally varying in each, which would not be the case if they had any foundation in nature, like our passions and propensities. Acquired habits, however, can never draw us aside so far from the walks of nature, as to eradicate our propensities for its intenser and more vivid engagements; and music, accordingly, like love, subjects all men to its influence, except those who are

"Fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." Accordingly it retains its sway in high as well as in low life, though it exercises a more absolute and unresisted control in the latter.

But it is one thing to be affected by music, another to produce the effect. We are all born with different degrees of sensibility, but nature seldom produces any of us so dormant as not to be, we shall not say merely pleased, but actually thrown into a species of mental and physical rapture by the syren infatuation of music. The body yields to the bounding, buoyant, and indescribable emotions of the mind, so that music exercises its spell over soul and body at the same moment. The degree of sensibility, however, generally determines the degree of pleasure which it communicates, and a musical genius can therefore only result from sensibility of the finest and most exquisite mould. It

cannot therefore be acquired, for art cannot create feelings which nature has denied us, though it may check, or give a new direction to their original tendencies.

These observations are suggested by the surprising and admirable little infant, who forms the subject of our present memoir. We have listened to her divine touches with feelings of too exquisite and etherial a mould, to be produced either by art, or the disciple of art, and of which we would not only believe ourselves incapable, but of which we could not even form an idea, had we never heard the strains by which they were produced. Could the little Lyra have ever produced this effect, if she had not been a peculiar favourite of nature, if she did not possess that exquisite degree of sensibility which responds to all those finer tones and divine strains which wake us to rapture and delight, and shudder instinctively from all those discordant sounds that intercept the harmony by which this rapture is produced? When we hear her,

"Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo,

Impetus hic, sacræ semina meutis habet." We have always been of opinion, that a genius for music is the result of extreme sensibility, particularly in that organ which is the medium of sound, but had we even entertained a doubt on the subject, this little enchanting minstrel would instantly remove it. The expression of her countenance eternally varies, but always harmonises with the variation of the strains by which it is produced. In the finer notes, her head appears as fixed as a statue, and her ears in an attitude of attention, which no language can describe; but anon she strikes the lyre with a bold and fearless hand, and her countenance becomes then as strongly, but as indescribably, expressive, as her former rivetted, and yet angelic, attention. It is not the expression of joy, nor of its absence: it indicates neither pain nor pleasure, joy nor melancholy; it expresses no passion for which we have a name ; but it seems to say to the harp, as if in anger, and yet not angry, you

shall obey my will; you shall produce none of your discordant sounds: you were at one time stubborn and reluctant, and would fain produce

sounds that grated on my ear; but I have subdued your rebellious spirit, and you shall now utter not a sound, breathe not a sigh, that is not in harmony with my feelings, and the emotions which I seek to create. It is with this kind of feeling that her fingers fly, or rather sweep, along the lyre, with a boldness and command that is perfectly astonishing. In the intermediate parts, every note is accompanied by a corresponding motion. of the body, and expression of countenance. The hand that is not employed upon the harp, is waving gracefully in the air, but always in perfect harmony with the music, and falls at the proper moment on the harp, as if by accident. It is, however, the expression of her countenance, that completely discloses the quick and rapid sensibility that reigns. within. Her eyes inform you of the delight which her own harmony inspires, and she unites all the intelligence of age, with all the sweetness, simplicity, and innocence of youth. Indeed every thing that can be noticed in the child proves the extreme sensibility or susceptibility of her feelings; and we have no doubt but she will hereafter claim alliance with the genus irritabile vatum. We heard her harp one time out of tune, and the discordant string produced such an instant ejaculation of anger, that the instrument was immediately removed from her, and put into tune. In the finer notes, where she is all fixed attention, she seems as if endeavouring to steal her fingers across the lyre, and to hush it into silent and insensible repose.

If, however, our own observation did not convince us that art had no part in producing the extraordinary musical powers of this infant, the particulars that have been communicated to us of her early propensities, would convince us that she owes all to nature, or to that quick and tremulous sensibility with which nature has endowed her.

When at the age of nine months, while in her nurse's arms, she shewed an evident genius for music, by the rapture she expressed whenever she heard a song or tune; but what is more surprising this rapture was governed and moderated by the most exquisite attention to the music. It is still more surprising, or, if nothing be surprizing in itself, and owes its

supposed existence to our ignorance, it is still more unaccountable, more incapable of being brought within the grasp of philosophy and human comprehension, that at this early age, certain tunes should fret and displease her, a proof that whatever is capable of affording us most pleasure is also capable of giving us most pain, when unaccompanied by all the pleasing qualities of which it is capable. The fairest of all nature's works is a beautiful woman, but what do we look upon as the ugliest and most deformed? St. Pierre tells you, and we believe all mankind will agree with him, that no object is more disagreeable or abhorrent to our nature than an ugly woman. Hence the extreme of pleasure and the extreme of pain are always produced by the same object, whenever it clothes itself in qualities, that do not harmonize with those which rendered it so pleasing in our eyes. The man whose virtues attract our esteem and friendship, is of all men the most reprobate and detestable to us, when we discover that his virtues are feigned, and the fruit of the most refined hypocrisy. A man of exquisite taste cannot endure the productions of common artists, but who relishes more the simple and elegant productions of taste and genius ? It is so with music. He who is most enraptured with the concord of sweet sounds, is of all men less capable of enduring their discords; and he who can bear discordant sounds without pain, will, you may stake your life upon it, hear the most enchanting strains with the most phlegmatic indifference. Our little enthusiast's mother, suspecting from her aversion to certain tunes, and her delight in others, that she possessed a musical genius, was induced to put this supposed genius to the test, by running down on her voice seven notes, omitting the key note, which omission the infant instantly perceived or rather felt, and with a most expressive and evident look of surprise, sounded the note which was thus purposely omitted; and when her mother, in running up the eight notes, slowly stopped before the third, she instinctively sounded it, and so the fifth and eighth, whenever omitted by her mother. At the age, if age it may be called, of sixteen months, she could sing every tune which she had an opportunity

of hearing, and, in two months after, she could perfectly distinguish between a major and a minor key, expressing her perception or rather sense of the difference in a manner very perceptible to those who witnessed her, but very difficult to be described to those who did not. To explain mute, though expressive feelings, is as difficult as to define simple ideas. The infant, from the moment her musical propensities were formed, evinced an evident predilection for the harp; but whether this arose from any original determination of nature, or from its being the first instrument that caught her attention and bewitched her imagination, is perhaps a question to which the closest attention to the progress and developement of her genius would not enable even her parents to reply. Even before she was capable of walking, she kept her eyes immoveably fixed upon it, nor could any other object attract her attention until it was removed from her presence. As soon as she was capable of moving round the bound without assistance, she tried constantly to get at the harp, and to play or make out tunes upon it. From this period she constantly played tunes with her mother and sister, keeping her own part, and singing perfectly in time and tune. At the age of two, a harp mistress was engaged to instruct a young lady in the house, and the little infant could not be prevailed upon to leave the room during the hours of instruction; and not only evinced the greatest delight, but paid the most fixed attention to the harp mistress's instruction, and when she and her pupil retired, the infant climbed up with difficulty the chair or music stool, and practised the instructions she had heard given to the young lady, with such success that she soon played two or three tunes in perfect time. Her parents, fortunately, had too much good sense to check the current of her genius, and accordingly had her regularly instructed on her favourite instrument. From this period she gave evident and rapid proofs of her surprising talent, and soon outstripped young ladies who began to learn the harp long before her, and she played, publicly at the Rotunda, a variety of national airs, with different variations, before she

weighed twenty pounds. Up to this period, however, she only evinced a genius for execution or performance; but from the moment she attained this early degree of excellence, her genius would not suffer her to confine herself to mere imitation, and she could no longer remain impaled within the precise limits which her teachers had prescribed to her. To every thing she was taught, she added new graces and cadences, pianos and fortes, with the most exquisite taste, and the most refined judgment. About four months after she had begun the harp, she displayed new evidences of her transcendent genius, and composed two or three original airs of her own-not in simple notes, but in chords with three or four transitions from one key to another, returning back to her first. key according to the strictest rules. If the right hand part is taught this little prodigy, she invariably and instantly plays the proper bass without the slightest instruction. In fact, she possesses such an exquisite ear, that, so far from playing a wrong note, she. cannot endure to hear a wrong note. played by others; and, as we have already observed, the only thing that puts her out of temper, is to find a chord out of tune; and though, notwithstanding her infant age, she is not insensible to the presence of a crowded and respectable audience, she instinctively retreats from the harp, as if she had no auditors whatever, the moment she sounds a discordant note. The memory of this infant, is, if possible, still more surprising than her powers of execution, for she plays upwards of five hundred pages of music, without ever mistaking a passage, or even a note.

The infant's father is an Irish gentleman, the descendent of a very ancient and respectable family. After spending the greater part of his life in the military service, he retired to his patrimonial estate, which has been for some hundreds of years in his family. The infant's mother is a lady of the first rate accomplishments, the niece of an old baronet, and allied to families of the first distinction in Ireland. Both parents, however, though themselves independent, have judiciously, and honourably to themselves, deemed it a duty to realize an independence for the infant, by the

exhibition of her extraordinary and unrivalled powers, having a very numerous family to provide for. Her first appearance was at the Rotunda concerts in Dublin, about fourteen months ago, and she was then unable to climb the chair on which she performed. It is singular, that her progress, and the industry which she exercised to arrive at excellence in her art, aided, no doubt, by her fondness for the harp, should qualify her to be a performer at the Rotunda at this infantine age, being then little more than three years old. She catches every tune or piece she hears with the most surprising avidity, and even twelve months back, if she only heard the treble of any tune, she would put bases to it, according to the most regular laws of music, and she now plays upwards of two hundred pages of music every day without the slightest appearance of fatigue, and with as much certainty as if she were twenty years old. In this respect, indeed, she cannot possibly improve. If she hears a band or any instrument in the street,she instantaneously catches the tune and plays it off impromptu. There is a full length portrait of the infant at the Picture Gallery in

Lemmington, and we should have many portraits of her, if her parents yielded to the wishes of several eminent portrait painters. The painting from which the present engraving is taken, is by Miss Ross, of Charlotte Street, a young lady of very promising and superior talents, and is exhibited at Somerset House. She has been visited by, at least, upwards of fifty thousand persons. It is remarkable that her mother gave as early evidences of her genius for drawing, in which she eminently excels, as the infant has for music, and she is also an excellent per. former on the piano-forte. At the early age of ten she finished, in a very masterly style, several paintings in oil, taken from scriptural and other subjects, which have been admired by our most eminent artists. These specimens we have seen, and can consequently speak of them with the greatest confidence. The infant's talent is therefore hereditary, and the result of that exquisite sensibility of feeling from which alone a genius for poetry, painting, and music, can ever emanate. The infant plays upwards of six hundred pages of music by memory alone.

THE Memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier contain an interesting correspondence between that Princess and Madame de Motteville which proves, that in those times, the ladies occupied themselves occasionally with matters totally different from the speculations of the modern belles.

One evening the two ladies got into a long conversation, about the delights of a life of retirement and solitude, and seem to have been as much in love with the subject, as if they had just been perusing Zimmerman's book. "This conversation," says the Princess,"opened an extensive field for speculative reasoning, and we should not have separated so soon, if the Queen had not gone to the theatre immediately. I wandered on the sea shore for some time, quite alone, reflecting upon the plan which a genuine hermit ought to follow, and came to E. M. May, 1825.