that wonderful composition; which I have been hearing for more than thirty years, and still with increasing pleasure and admiration.

So refined and mysterious is the effect of musical concord, that some learned artists have discovered in it an image of the supreme source of all order and harmony. A writer of the last century, who composed a valuable Treatise upon Music, in very elegant Latin, has the following observation: "Nec vacat

mysterio, ternos per intervalla sonos invi"cem superimpositos, universæ harmoniæ "medullam ac summam ambientis vinculi "nodo nexuque complecti: divinæ illius "monadis triadisque, nutu suo omnia in "ordine pondere et mensurà gubernantis, "non leve simulachrum; quo nihil ad musicæ "laudem illustrius, nihil excellentius." This passage, in the author's own English, runs thus: "When I farther consider that three "sounds, placed by the interval of a third "one above another, do constitute one entire "harmony, which governs and comprises all "the sounds which by art or imagination "can at once be joined together in musical "concordance; this I cannot but think a 'significant emblem of that supreme and "incomprehensible THREE in ONE, govern"ing,

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VOL. X.

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66

'ing, comprising, and disposing the whole "machine of the world, with all its included

፡፡

parts, in a most perfect and stupendous harThis physical Trinity, as an mony *. absolute fact in music, must be evident to every beginner in the science; and it is a Trinity in Unity: but it is a mirror, in which many eyes will discern no image: and I think I have seen this very notion rejected as chimerical by some musical writer of a later date. With me it is a matter of small concern, how such an allusion would be relished by a Middleton, a Bayle, or a Voltaire, whose minds were poisoned by a disaffection to truth. Certain it is, whatever use we may make of the principle, that the compass of all harmony can afford us no more than three sounds in concord, however they may be multiplied by repetitions; and that if they are perfectly in tune, they constitute one sound, which an unpractised ear would find it extremely difficult to decompose. In the harmonics, we have them included within the system of a single note; and in that aerial consonance which was either discovered or observed by Tartini, two concordant notes will generate a third to complete the triplicity

* Symson's Chelys, or Division-Viol, Part I. § 13.

of

And where is the

of the harmony. So apposite is this picture, when compared with the original, that I should be sorry to take the resemblance for the work of chance. wonder, if nature and revelation, which have the same author, should speak the same language? It would rather be wonderful if they did not. And their language would be better understood, if it were not unhappily the fashion to affect wisdom by rejecting mystery; though the world is so full of it, that the attempt to exclude it is an effort of extreme ignorance. If Mr. Symson's allusion is just, and founded in the nature of things, it teaches us this important truth, that when the praises of the Creator are offered up by the church with sounds of harmony, we pay our tribute to him in that coin which bears his image and superscription; and thus we render unto God that which is properly his own.

Even Heathens had some obscure glimpse (however they came by it) of a relation between the mystery of music and the mystery of the Deity. Pythagoras, who with his disciples used to take an oath by the figure of a trigon as by a divinity, asserted that God was number and harmony*. He could scarcely

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* Τον Θεόν εοντα αριθμόν και αρμονίην. Lucian. Vit. Auct. The same is related of him by Diogenes Laertius.

scarcely be so absurd as to maintain this doctrine in a literal sense; but must have meant, that there are certain properties in number and harmony symbolical of divinity. The Chaldaic philosophy professed this symbolical wisdom, and taught that the natural world abounds with images of divine truths*. It proceeded so far as to maintain, either in a physical or theological sense, or both, that nature presents us with a Trinity in Unity †.

After all I have said, or can say upon this subject, I must leave it to the meditation of the Christian reader, who is the only proper judge of it; well knowing that it is impossible to recommend a devout sentiment in such terms as shall make it acceptable to an indevout mind. So long as we speculate with the wisest Christians and Heathens, we shall be guilty neither of enthusiasm nor credulity, if, while we are charmed with the sounds of the cathedral, our minds are raised to the contemplation of that mysterious power, from whom all harmony proceeded, and in whom it shall end.

DIS

* Σύμβολα γαρ παΐρικός Ναός εσπειρε κατα κόσμον. See Stanley's Lives of the Philosophers, fol. Part xix.

+ Πανι γας εν κόσμω λάμπει Τριας ης Μονας αρχει. Ibid.

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DISCOURSE VII.

On Fossil Bodies, with some Observations introductory to a Theory of the Earth.

T

Introductory Observations.

HE science of fossils comprehends the knowledge of all those various bodies which are dug from the subterraneous parts of the earth; whether they are such as were naturally formed there, or belonged originally to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and were deposited there by some change in the course of nature.

I need not say much to prove that the subject is both useful and entertaining, when it is considered, that one of the first universities in the world hath admitted and established a professor, whose department it is to be a guardian and an interpreter of the fossil bodies collected by the late Dr. Woodward; whose merits in this science as a wri