The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. | Page 8

The Artist-Brothers were closely united in feeling, striving through
different mediums to refine the soul of man.
For the spirit of Beauty always awakens the spirit of Love, sent by God
to elevate and consecrate the heart of man!
* * * * *
Of a more subtle genius and more daring spirit than Zophiel or
Jemschid, Angelo boldly launched into the bewildering chaos of the
realm of sound. As yet the laws of the Acoustic Prism were unknown;
the seven-ranged ladder was all unformed, and without its aid it seemed

impossible to scale the ever-renewing heights, to sound the
ever-growing depths of this enchanted kingdom. But Angelo was a
bold adventurer. Haunted by the heaven sounds, vague memories of his
antenatal existence, although he had entirely lost the meaning of their
flow, as one may recall snatches of the melody of a song when he
cannot remember one of its words--he commenced his subtle task. He
resolved the Acoustic Prism; he built the seven-runged ladder; he
charmed the wandering Tones, and bound them in the holy laws of
Rhythm. Divining the hidden secrets of their affiliations, relations,
loves, and hates, he wrought them into gorgeous webs of harmonics, to
clothe the tender but fiery soul of ever-living melodies. Soothing their
jarring dissonances into sweet accord, he filled their pining wails with
that 'divine sorrow,' that mystic longing for the Infinite, which is the
inner voice of every created heart. If he could not find the heaven sense
of the tones, he found their earthly meaning, and caused them to repeat
or suggest every joy and sorrow of which our nature is capable. He
forced the heaven tongue to become human, while it retained its divine.
Without a model or external archetype, he formed his realm and
divined its changing limits; wide enough to contain all that is noble,
holy enough to exclude all that is low or profane. He forever exorcised
the spirits of Evil--the strong Demons of materialism--from his
rhythmed world. Flinging his spells on the unseen air, he forced it to
breathe his passion, his sighs; he saddened it with his tears, kindled it
with his rapture, until fired and charged with the electric breath of the
soul, it glowed into an atmosphere of Life, swaying at will the wild and
restless heart. He created _Music, the only universal language_,
holding the keys of Memory, and wearing the crown of Hope. Angelo,
strange architect in that dim domain of chaos, thy creation, fleeting,
invisible, and unembodied, is in perpetual, flow; changeful as the play
of clouds, yet stable as the eternal laws by which they form their misty
towers, their glittering fanes, and foam-crested pinnacles! Trackless as
the wind, yet as powerful, thy sweet spirit, Music, floats wherever beats
the human heart, for Rhythm rocks the core of life. Music nerves the
soul with strength or dissolves it in love; she idealizes Pain into
soul-touching Beauty; assuming all garbs, robing herself in all modes,
and moving at ease through every phase of our complicated existence.
White and glittering are her robes, yet she is no aristocrat. She disdains

not to soothe the weary negro in his chains, or to rock the cradle of the
child of shame, as the betrayed and forsaken girl murmurs
broken-hearted lullabies around the young 'inheritor of pain.' She is
with the maiden in the graceful mazes of the gay Mazourka; she
inflames the savage in the barbaric clang of the fierce war-dance; or
marks the measured tramp of the drilled soldiery of civilization. She is
in the court of kings; she makes eloquent the ripe lip of the cultured
beauty; she chants in the dreary cell of the hermit; she lightens the
dusty wallet of the wanderer. She glitters through the dreams of the
Poet; she breathes through the direst tragedies of noblest souls. On--on
she floats through the wide world, everywhere present, everywhere
welcome, refining, and consecrating our dull life from the Baptismal
Font to the Grave!
All the inner processes of life are guarded by the hand of nature. In vain
would the curiosity of the scalpel knife invade the sanctuary of the
beating heart to lay open the burning mystery of Being. The outraged
Life retreats before it to its last citadel, and the indignant heart, upon its
entrance, refuses to throb more. The citadel is taken; but the secret of
Life is not to be discovered in the kingdom of Death. It is because
Music is essentially a living art that we find it impossible to read the
mystery of its being. If Painting touch us, we can always trace the
emotion to its exciting cause; if we weep over the pages of the Poet, it
is because we find our own blighted hopes imaged there. But why does
Music