“Humph!” said he; “for my part, I know nothing of music; not I. I thought I did, until I played three months every morning with Paganini. I would not give up the struggle sooner. At the end of that time I broke my fiddle, and abandoned fiddling forever. It was necessary to do that, or throttle the old hair-scraper. I should strangle with anguish in my chair, if I knew that there was a man living who could excel me in any thing I undertook. But what can one do? We have but one life to live. We are like felons, fumbling with a bunch of keys at the outer door of the sanctuary of immortality, while the police of death are hurrying after us round the corner; and who knows whether he has got the right key? No lasting fame can be founded on music. No melody is immortal but that of the drum and the cannon. That alone is eternally re-produced. How the Corsican knew to touch that instrument!—the Handel of the iron flute! What brave tunes they played off at Borodino and at Eylau! What a concert was given under the pyramids—the companies in squares, the musicians at the angles, and the shod feet of the Mameluke cavalry marking time upon the crusted sand! For the rest, what composer is there whom you recognise as _great_—whose name rushes on the breathless soul, and echoes through the spirit with a sound like thunder, or the voice of Milton? Fashions vary; tastes change. Who plays Purcell?—who sings Arne? The musician cannot throw himself upon that broad, unchanging instinct of popular judgment which, after the subtleties of criticism are exhausted and the disputes of the schools are at an end, must decide upon questions of taste, and to which literary creators may directly appeal. The _people_ cannot get at music to judge of it. Overtures cannot play themselves; and the professors, whose taste is corrupted by the over-refinements of science, take good care that the world at large shall not hear that great, universal music of a past age which would sweep away their conspiracies against taste. Lightning itself would go out of fashion, and thunder be pronounced exploded, if you could prevent the people from hearing them; if the learned had the playing of them, they would swear to us that steam-guns and rockets were more sublime. Still it is better to compose good choruses than to write bad poetry, like the great Frederic, or read worse, like Napoleon. We must multiply and spin out the offices of life. We must cram full the charge of life, if we would have a loud report. We must coin sleep into immortality, and mould the waste of leisure into stars of glory. We have but one life to live.”