Favorite Songs and Hymns For School and Home, page: 0345

450 Of The World's Best Songs And Hymns, With Lyrics & Sheet music for voice & piano.

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	FAVORITE SONGS FOR SCHOOL AND HOME.		345
	The Life of Emotion.�It is the life of emotion which music seizes upon and makes objective. We see the character of a nation's heart in its music, as we see the character of its poetry. Italian music is sentimen�tal and superficial; it often sacrifices simplicity to beautiful, to delicate, or to crashing effects; it is in�tense rather than passionate. French music is sensa�tional and flippant. German music simple, direct, and earnest. We are of course dealing only with the lype in every case; no such sweeping criticism can	be of universal application. There fe one class of music to which these remarks do not apply. In the words of the author of " Music and Morals," " The music of patriotic times and national anthems is al. ways earnest and dignified. In the Marseillaise there is an almost sombre severity, wholly unlike the frivo�lous, superficial grace and sentimental pathos of the ordinary French school. The men who sing it are not playing at war like fools, nor are they mere chil�dren, delighted in its outward pomp and circum-
	LONG, LONG AGO.	A H Bailby
	stance. They trudge on, footsore and weary, knowing all the horror and the pain that is in slore for them, and still willing to conquer and to die. That is the spirit Of the Marseillaise, and in it, as in Garibaldi's Hymn, the seriousness of the crisis had called forth the finest qualities of both the French and Italian characters, and banished for a time what is languishing in the one and frivolous in the other." Poetry, painting, and sculpture reach the emotion* indirectly through the	intellect Music reaches them directly, and we should therefore rightly expect to find something in commoi between the two. We do, in fact, see in both those qualities which would make it possible for the one to be the expression of the other; elation and depression which can be expressed musically by a high or low pitch; intensity and variety, expressed by means of the touch and slight modifications of tune by the player, and change of key by the composer.�Mrs. Herrick.