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Music from the South. 77
pursuits. It may be remarked (as bearing on the connection of the fine arts), that architecture in ltalv had got past the plight of the savage's wigwam, or the natural grotto in which the people of a persecuted sect might assemble covertly for worship—-had raised august buildings, which the taste of our time appreciates and its workers imitate—long ere the painter was, in his world, superior to the wigwam artists : longer still, ere the musician had ceased in his gloomy psalmody to corrcs-pond with the rude and awful catacomb. Further, whereas architect and painter, once having found then' use and level, established principles and canons of art, and thenceforward each, in his own great period, walked steadily forward from skill to skill, from beauty to beauty; it is noticeable that in music the progress of inborn genius, as regulated and quickened by acquired science, was slack and timid in its adjustment.
But it may be divined by something more than random guess-work. The history of our art would reveal the fact that the nobles of Italy, whether ecclesiastic or lay, did far more to leaven the people with musical traditions—to quicken them with musical impulses—than the people themselves could |
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