Nullus enim locus sine genio est. --- Servius.
"LA MUSIQUE," says Marmontel, in those "Contes Moraux"* which in all our
translations, we have insisted upon calling "Moral Tales," as if in mockery of their spirit -
-- "la musique est le seul des talents qui jouissent de lui meme; tous les autres veulent des
temoins." He here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity
for creating them. No more than any other talent, is that for music susceptible of
complete enjoyment, where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise. And it is
only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in
solitude. The idea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly, or has
sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point, is, doubtless, the very tenable one
that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively
alone. The proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre
for its own sake, and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach
of fallen mortality --- and perhaps only one --- which owes even more than does music to
the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the
contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold aright the glory of
God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, the presence --- not of
human life only, but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow
upon the soil and are voiceless --- is a stain upon the landscape --- is at war with the
genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and the
waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud
watchful mountains that look down upon all, --- I love to regard these as themselves but
the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole --- a whole whose form
(that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among
associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediate sovereign is the
sun; whose life is eternity, whose thought is that of a God; whose enjoyment is
knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity, whose cognizance of ourselves is akin
with our own cognizance of the animalculae which infest the brain --- a being which we,
in consequence, regard as purely inanimate and material much in the same manner as
these animalculae must thus regard us.
* Moraux is here derived from moeurs, and its meaning is "fashionable" or more strictly "of manners."
Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand ---
notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood --- that space, and
therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles
in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without collision, of the
greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately such as,
within a given surface, to include the greatest possible amount of matter; --- while the
surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be
accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against
bulk being an object with God, that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of
matter to fill it. And since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a
