Music is not exhausted in expressing feeling, though some persons are so constituted as not beyond this to understand or to enjoy it. But music of more profound combination is not, on this account, without meaning and without value. The higher forms of music, like the higher forms of poetry, must, of course, if tested by mere instinct, seem remote and complicated. Music, too, is susceptible of more multiplied combinations than poetry; and, without the restraints of arbitrary signs and definite ideas, can expatiate in the region of pure imagination. In the true sense of the word, it is infinite. Not bound to form, not bound to color, not bound to speech, it is as unlimited as the capacity of the soul to exist in undefinable states of emotional being. And into these it can throw the soul with inconceivable rapidity of change. The great master of even a single instrument appears, indeed, a wizard. He seems, in truth, to be the only artist to whom the designation of wizard can with any correctness be applied. Men of other genius may be creators, but the musician is the wizard. His instrument is a talisman. It is full of conjurations—out from it he draws his witchery; he puts his spell upon all around him; he chains them in the slavery of delight; and he is the only despot that rules over willing captives. No other power on the imagination is so complete—so uncontrollable. The fiction or the poem you can lay aside; the picture or statue moves you but calmly; the actor is at the mercy of an accident; the orator may fail, by reason of your opposition to his sentiments or opposition to his person; but the musician draws you from every thing which can counteract his charm, and once within his circle you have no escape from his power. Emotional conceptions—solemn, gay, pathetic, impassioned—are as souls in all his sounds. But in the case of an executive musician, the art seems incarnate in the artist. We associate the personality of the artist with the effects of his art. We are not yet within the limitless domain of imaginative music. The great instrumentalist is, indeed, a wizard—a cunning necromancer; but he is before us while he works his spells, and though we cannot resist the enchanter we _behold_ him. In a great composer there is a higher potency, and it is one that is not seen. The action of his spirit on our spirits, though exercised by means of intermediate agents, is yet that of an invisible incantation. The great composer is an imperial magician—the sovereign of genii and the master of wizards. He is a Prospero, and _Music_ is his _Enchanted Island_. The creative musician, and the region in which he dwells, can have no analogy more correct than that presented to us in Shakspeare’s extraordinary play of “The Tempest.” There we have the loud-resounding sea; at one moment the sun bright in the clear sky, at another hidden by the mist or breaking through the blood-red cloud; now the heavens are full of stars, and in an instant they are thick with gloom; the elements gather into masses, they clash together, and the thunder and the waves fill up the chorus. Then the day dawns softly, and the morning breaks into summer songs. Caves are there and pleasant dells; solitudes are there, dark and lonely; spots beautiful as well as terrible; barren and blasted heaths, where goblins hold their revels; and labyrinthian walks, where sweet-hearts, not unwilling, lose themselves and linger. The earth, the atmosphere, shore, stream, grove, are filled with preternatural movements, with sweet voices and strange sounds. There are Ariel-melodies, there are Caliban groanings; there are the murmurings of manly passions, and the whisperings of maiden-love; there are Bacchanalian jovialities, high and mysterious monologues, fanciful and fairy-ditties, the full swellings of excited hearts, and the choral transports of all nature, made living and made lyrical. But the Prospero who rules in this island, dwells in a lonely cell, and yet commands all the voices of the universe to do his bidding. Have I not, by this analogy, described a grand imaginative composer? Without intending it, I have described Beethoven. I speak, I admit, only as one of the appreciating vulgar—as one of the impressible ignorant; I am able only to express a sensation, not to pronounce a judgment. In listening to Beethoven’s music there is a delight, for which, no doubt, the learned artist can give a reason. I know nothing of art, and with me the listening is an untutored, a wild, an almost savage joy or sorrow, or a mixture of emotions that cannot be defined. The music of Beethoven, if I can judge from the little that I have heard of it, is _unearthly_; but the unearthliness of this music is of a compound nature.