am persuaded that the effect of a great part of our sacred music is
lost by an excess of harmony and a too great volume of sound. On the
same principle, a loud crash of thunder deafens and terrifies; but its
low and distant rumbling produces an agreeable emotion of sublimity.

The songs of birds are as intimately allied with poetry as with
music. The lark has been aptly denominated a "feathered lyric" by one
of the English poets; and the analogy becomes apparent when we
consider how much the song of a bird resembles a lyrical ballad in its
influence on the mind. Though it utters no words, how plainly it
suggests a long train of agreeable images of love, beauty, friendship,
and home! When a young person has suffered any severe wound of the
affections, he seldom fails, if endowed with a sensitive mind, to
listen to the birds as sharers in his affliction. Through them the
deities of the groves seem to offer him their consolation. By
indulging this habit of making companionship with the objects of
Nature, all pleasing sights and sounds gradually become certain
anodynes for his sorrow; and those who have this mental alembic for
turning grief into a poetic melancholy can seldom be reduced to a
state of absolute despondency. Poetry, or rather the poetic sentiment,
exalts all our pleasures and soothes all our afflictions by some
illusive charm, whether it be turned into the channel of religion or
romance. Without this reflection of light from the imagination, what
is the passion of love? and what is our love of beauty and of sweet
sounds, but a mere gravitation?

The voice of every singing-bird has its associations in the minds of
all susceptible persons who were born and nurtured within the
precincts of its untutored minstrelsy. The music of birds is
modulated in pleasant unison with all the chords of affection and