MACMILLAN AND THE ILLUSTRATED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8928, 17 December 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

MACMILLAN AND THE ILLUSTRATED.

Thk articles whioh make np the contents of Macmillan for November are, perhaps, more curious than intensely interesting, " A Teacher of the Violin," by J. H. Shorthouse, is a story whose scene is laid in Ger« many, and whose whole construction and style savours of jterman mysticism. The writer tells how, as a child, he was impressed by the sounds of Nature. " From a very little child I was profoundly Impressed by the sounds of Nature ; the rushing water, the rustling oaks, the sighing and moaning wind down the mountain valleys spoke to me with distinct utterance, and with a sensu of meaning, and even of speeoh. These sounds were more even than this: they became a passion, a fascination, a haunting presence, and even a dread."

The boy is introduced to an Italian musician, who plays the violin. Here is the effect:—

"I am not going to describe this playing. Attempts have been sometimes made to describe violin-playing in words, but rarely, I think, with much success. I shall only say that almost as soon as he began to play, what seemed to me then a singularly strange idea occurred to me. This man, I thought, Is not playing on his instrument; he is playing on my brain. His violin is only as it were the bow, or rather, every note of his violin vibrates with the according note of the brain-fibre. I do not say that I put the thought exactly into these words ; but these are ttie words into which, at the present time, I put the recollection of my thought. I need not point out hew my ignorance erred in detail, how the brain has no extended strings corresponding to the strings of a violin, and consequently has no vibration, and therefore canuot respond to the vibra* tions of a violin ; but 1 have since thought that there was more truth in this wild iaea of a child's ignorance than would at first appear, and it seemed to lead the way to a second thought which orossed my mind in the transport of ecstasy produced by this, the first violin-playing worthy of the name which I had ever heard. "I knew the secret now, both of the entrancing whisper of the wind-musio, and also why, at a certain point, it had failed. The blind, senseless wind, blowing merely where it listed, had aroused the human spirit through the medium of grass and reed and rock and forest, -and oalled it through the fairy gate into cloud and dreamland; but when, instead of the blind, senseless wind, the instructed human spirit itself touched the strings, music, born of flultured

harmony, through all the long scale of octave and according pitch, won for the listening, rapt, ecstatic spirit, an insight and an entrance into realms which the outward eye had not seen, the secret of which is not lawful or possible to utter to any save to the spirit-born." ' > He is introdnoed to an enthusiastic old musioian, who speaks thus: — " He struck a single dear note upon the harpsichord, and turned towards the window, a casement of which was open towards the crowded street. " ' Down there,' he said—' where I know not, but somewhere down there—is a heart and brain that beats with that beat, that vibrates with the vibration of that note, that hears and recognises, and is consoled. To every note struck anywhere there is an accordant note in some human brain, toiling, dying, suffering, here below.' "He looked at me, and I said, 'I have understood something of this also.' " ' l his is why,' he went on 'In music all hearts are revealed to us: we sympathise with all hearts, not only with those near to us, but with those afar off. It is not strange that in the high treble octaves that apeak of childhood and of the lark singing and of heaven, you, who are young, should hear of such things ; but, in the sadden drop into the solemn lower notes, why should you, who know nothing of such feelings, see and feel with the old man who returns to the streets und fields of his youth ? He lives, his heart vibrates in Bach notes : his life, his heart, his tears exist in them, and through them in yon. Just as one looks from a lofty precipitous height down into the teeming streets of a great city, full of pigmy forme ; so, in the majestic march of sound, we get away from lite and its littleness, and see the whole of life spread out before us, and feel the pathos of it with the pity of an arofciangel, as we could never have done in the bustle of the streets there below.' " ' You are cutting the ground from under my feet, my friend.' said the old professor, rather testily. 'It is your business to teaoh mn«ic, mine to talk about it." "The old master smiled at this sally, but he went on all the same. I thought that he perceived in me a sympathetic listener. " 'Have you never felt that in the shrill clear surging chords of the higher octaves you were climbing into a loftier existence, and do you not feel that for the race itself something like this is also possible ? It will be in and through music that human thought will be carried beyond the point it has hitherto reached.'"

Of course there is in the story, besides this lofty strain about music, a love tale of mystic ardour. " Omar Khayyam " is a notice of the life and poetry of a poet of mediaeval Khorassan. This Mohammedan is not a preacher of gloomy philosophy, or a mere sensualist. Hrar him on love "If In your heart the lijht of love you plant (Whether the mosquo or synagogue you haunt), If in Love's court its name be registered, Hell it will fear not. Heaven It will not want."

Here are some verses, in which the delight of life and love, -sac? },».•> irsQsitoriacfl: of all (ire shown : —

" Clouds come, ..nd «'»nlr upon the srass Ie tain, let wine's red roses make our moments fain , And let the verdure pi ease oar eyes to-day. Ere grass from our (lust shall give joy again. Sweetheart, if Time a cloud on thee have flung, To iuk the breath must leave thee, now so young, Sit here, upon the grass, a day or two. While yet no gratis from tby dust shall have sprung. " Long i efore thee and me were Night and Morn : For some great eud the sky is round us borne : upon this dust, ah,.step with careful foot, Some Beauty's eyeball here may lie torloru. " This cup once loved, like me, a lovely girl, And sighed, entangled in a scented curl : This handle, that you see upon its neck, Once wound itself about a neck of pearl."

We conclude our extracts from the quotations made in the magazine with the fol> lowing:— " Do thou aewirj do htimau heart to wrlD.-j. Let no one teel thine anger hotly sting. Woulast thou enjoy perpetual happiness? Know how to Suffer : cause no suffering." A carefully-written article discusses the whole question of the historical novel, which, notwithstanding Scott and Dumas, some recent writers have declared to be impossible as a success. And it must be confessed that when Scott's greatest successes are closely looked at, they will be found not to consist in the historical element in his novels. "The Antiquary," "The Heart of Mid» I lothian," "The Bride of Lammermoor," I depend not at all upon history, but upon the dramatic power of the writer dealing with the story of human passion. " Ivanhoe," which is, perhaps, the moat ambitiously and I exclusively historical of Scott's novels, iB a poor thing compared with the works abovementioned. Historical works, it must be acknowledged, have not been a success ; and yet it must be acknowledged that merely literary men have succeeded in painting historical characters, in many cases, far more accurately than historians. Look, for instance, how Shakespeare shows the grandeur and power of Caesar and Mark Antony; how Scott portrays Claverhouse and Balfour of Burleigh, and Louiß XL, in " Quentin Durward and how even a lesser man, Bulwer Lytton, gives us Cardinal Richelieu to the life. " Saint Columbanus " is a narrative of the life of a saint, who was born in Leinster, in 543, and who was prominent amongst the " missionary saints " of those times. The other articles of thiß number of Macmillan are instructive and appropriate. The "English Illustrated Magazine" keeps its sphere in which it is supreme. The frontispieoe of the issue for Movember is entitled "Girls Coming Home with Goats," and illustrates an article on the Island of Capri. The continued stories are—"The Medidations of Ralph Hardelot," and " The Story of Jael." The article on Capri contains a number of engravings from drawings by VV. Maclaren, showing the daily life of the fishermen and fisherwomen, the goatherds, and olivegrowers of the romantic island. No. 11. of "Coaching I' ys and Coaching Ways," contains descriptions by pen-and ink and pencil of scenes on the Bath Road, when travelling was done in coaches or on horseback, and when all the humour and the opportunity for observation were not taken out of locomotion, as they are now-adays, by mere hurry. One picture is exquisitely humourous, where a lot of schoolboys, going down for the Christmas holidays, pepper with peashooters at an old gentleman who had been quietly jogging along on his cob. The winter scene is finely given. In " Eloped," an old postilion is thrashing away at two tired horses, the would-be bridgroom is yelling out from the ooaoh window, the sweet-faced young girl inside is looking as if she had abandoned herself to circumstance, while in the distance a ooaoh and four is tearing in pursuit.