people.

The wildest savage is not insensible to Rhythm. It fires his spirit in
the war dance and battle chant, soothes him in the monotonous hum of the
pow-wow, and softens him in naive love songs. It is the heart of music,
and it can be proved that low and vulgar rhythms have a debasing effect
upon the character of a people. 'Let me write the songs of a people,'
said a great thinker, 'and I care not who makes its laws:'--if he
included the tunes, there was no exaggeration in his thought. Alas! a
meretricious age scorns and neglects the true, because it is always
simple in its sublimity, and, striving to banish God from His own
creation, would also banish nature and joy from the heart! A pedantic
age loves all that is pretentious, glaring, and assuming; and Rhythm
stoops to rock the cradle of the newborn infant; to soothe the negro in
the rice swamp or cotton field; to shape into beauty the national and
patriotic songs of a laborious but contented peasantry, as among the
Sclaves--but what cares the age for the happiness of the race? 'Put
money in thy purse,' is its consolation and lesson for humanity.

The beat of the healthful heart is in unison with the feelings of the
hour. Agitation makes it fitful and broken, excitement accelerates, and
sorrow retards it. And this fact should be the model for all poetical
and musical rhythm.

To show how readily we associate feelings with different orders of
sound, let us suppose we are passing the night somewhere, where a
stranger, utterly unknown to us, occupies a room from which we can hear
the sound of his footsteps. Suppose that through the tranquil hours of
the night we hear his measured tread falling in equally accented and
monotonous spondees, it is certain that a quick imagination will at once