The Ohinemuri Gazette. AND UPPER THAMES WARDEN WEDNESDAY, NOV. 1 1899. THE SONATA OF THE CENTURY.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume VIII, Issue 643, 1 November 1899, Page 2

The Ohinemuri Gazette. AND UPPER THAMES WARDEN

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 1 1899. THE SONATA OF THE CENTURY.

/ wild a round unvatmsft'd tale deliver .. —-OthelLo, Act 1. Scene 3.

Has history evei' f "'shown anything like the binding together of a scattered race such as is now being exhibited by the Anglo - Saxon people; from tho Poles to the Equator! from Occident to Orient! The only parallel of to-day's splendid Unity of the British Nation is that of the Jewish Race. The difference is.in that, where the former is a militant, the latter is merely a negative union. But each are a peculiar people. Even the great fracture in the British, race of 1776, when the sturdy descendants of the men of the Mayflower sent the Hanoverian George's myrmidons to the right-about— this even has been repaired, and the race is solid and dominant today. There are a few sympathisers with the' Boers—indeed, we sympathise with them ourselves. How brave they are in their ignorance ! •Htw ignorant in their bravery!

Yet all the accidents-and incidents now occurring in Africa are .simply the accidence uucl 'incidence of the mastication , and digestion of an inferior by a superior 'Brutal, isn't it? It may be part of tlie sclicuu of the Universe, aiming.for that "Far-off Divine event To'-which the whole-creation.moves." Still the cruelty of battle is the thing most apparent now. In the music of the spheres, can harmony come, when the piece is-perfected, out of the discord of the nations now !! Miss Frances Ridley Hrivcilgal in her " Moonlight Sonata":— -mont lovely verse — gives • her thoughts. Asa child she day by day sat at a jangling piano to learn Beethoven's masterpiece. Its chords were difficult, crashed on her ears, wearied her little, hands, and it was a lesson learned with all difficulty. Then as boys close their Homer and Euclid on leaving school, she closed her piano. Years after, she was asked to play, among friends, and the piece set before her was this same sonata. Then in the fulness of .her womanhood she took in her hands the Masters chords. All that had seemed.once a mechanism of discord, came.back a concordance of glorious harmony. Her soul had grown to attune itself to that of the Master. So' in the discords of this horrid fin de siech slaughter, It is the minor chord, the harsh beat of dram, the clanging of the cymbal, the moan of the bass. But it surely must, or it v^puld not b*, part of the harmonics of this planet, making, as Lorenzo said to Jessica even in " —the smallest orb that thou beholdest, But in his motion like an angel sings." And so th@ context strikes, that " While this muddy vesture of decay . Doth grossly close it in, we cannot ■ hear it.'" This war is just, a)id being just is in harmony with all things. It is the crash of the 1 cymbal, the drum and the bugle, but i.tv is;that which must be, to complete the Sonata of the Century. ;' r ':