(himself blind)" the blind try to speak by music." As a rule, all blind people fancy that they have the gift of music, and need only make the attempt to become good players at once. In every Blind School nine-tenths of the pupils believe this, and of those who get their living in the streets ninety out of a hundred are musicians in some shape or other. These street performances, as the reader knows, comprise almost every known shade of melancholy sound, as well as here and there a gleam of melody and success. As far as a certain amount of manual dexterity goes-the accurate measure and rhythm, the precise progression of the parts of a fugue, or of bass, tenor, alto, and treble, all may be fairly observed; but when one looks for that exquisite finish and delicacy of expression which all music demands, that subtle weaving together of light and shade, which make up the cloudy passion or glorious light of Beethoven, the solemn grandeur or tenderness of Handel, the stormy joy and rush of the Elijah,' or the endless fairy grace of Mozart,-in a word, that inner soul of music without which it is but barren sound,—there, too often, the blind man fails, and there he is least conscious of his failure. This may spring from his having been taught badly; too much by rote and rule; or even too much by ear, and thus having been in some degree led to imagine that in catching hold of the mere sound of a phrase, or a succession of phrases, he is getting hold of the music. But arise how it may, the evil is undoubted, and varies only in degree. The want of this higher sense is to melody what the loss of perfume would be to flowers, of colour to the glory of sunset, almost of light to the world itself. Whether the blow that snatches from the blind man his share in the glory and grace of light, does not too often impair or destroy that diviner inner sense which discerns the full perfection of odour, of colour, and melody, the fragrant breath of morning, the inborn rhythm of all true verse, or the ȧvýpiÐμov yéλaoμa of the wide-spread sea, is a problem difficult to solve. But there can be no possible doubt that, however well old Homer's words Τὸν πέρι Μοῦσ ̓ ἐφίλησεν, δίδουδ ̓ ἀγαθόντε κακοι τε, may have fitted Demodocus, or the "Bard of Troy divine" himself, they are not the general heritage of blind musicians or poets. Every now and then, in the musical world, there rises for a moment to the surface some strange prodigy like Blind Tom, whose public concerts at St. James's Hall in 1866 attracted considerable attention; and so peculiar, indeed, was his case, and so unlike that of other blind musicians, that we pause to notice a few points in his history. He was the son of a negro slave, born in South Georgia in the year 1850; and brought up among other slave children. He was, too, a thorough "nigger," jet black, with thick blubber lips, protruding heels, and woolly hair. Up to seven years old, he was counted and treated as an idiot; when, suddenly, one night he was overheard playing the piano in his master's drawing-room; touching it with singular grace and beauty, wandering through rapid cadences, and wild bursts of melody, as a finished musician. As far as could be known, he had never even touched a piano till that night. But from that time forth, he was a prodigy among the planters' wives and daughters, and had free access to the piano, on which he every day did greater wonders; repeating without effort almost note by note any music once played to him, and with wonderful accuracy, mimicking any fault or peculiarity in the style of the performer. But, fondest of all was he of wandering away into some sad minor key, full of passion, sorrow, or pain that seemed striving for utterance, and yet was full of mystery to those who listened. His marvellous powers were soon exhibited to the American public; and then created as much astonishment as they have since done in London. After once hearing them, he would sit down and play, with amazing correctness, difficult pieces of music, a dozen pages in length; and placed at the piano with another performer he (like Mozart at nine years old) played a perfect bass accompaniment even to the treble of music heard for the first time. After any prolonged musical effort, says his American biographer, his whole bodily frame seems to give way, and exhaustion follows, accompanied by epileptic spasms. He sits full half a yard from the piano, with outstretched arms, clutching at the keys at first "like an ape clutching food," and now and then bursting out into an idiotic laugh. Then the head falls back, the hands begin to work, and wild strains of harmony float over the room, such as have rarely fallen on the ear before, or, in rapid succession, passages from Weber, Beethoven, and Mozart, all full of such intense passion that the whole audience are snatched into a wild uproar of applause, which the poor idiotic musician is himself the first to begin, and to end with a loud ringing laugh of "Yha, Yha!" in true negro fashion. Then, when all is over, a weary look of despair settles down on the distorted face, a tired sigh steals from the restless lips, and the last spark of music seems to have faded out into hopeless, dead, vacancy. But cases of this kind are altogether exceptional, and afford no safe ground for precedent, or indeed for argument of any kind. Tom's case is marked by so many strangely odd and contradictory features as almost to defy criticism, or the formation of anything like a clear judgment. He professed to have a wonderfully keen and sensitive ear; and he really had great dexterity in repeating with a parrotlike correctness phrases, or even long passages, of music only once heard; but on the other hand one of his favourite feats was to produce an outrageous, discordant, jumble of sound which no ear of the slightest pretence to sensibility could produce or endure without intense pain and disgust; playing, it is said, an air in one key with the right hand, an accompaniment in another key, while he sang the air in a third! Any such case as his therefore must stand alone, as a positive anomaly; if not as a monstrosity best fitted for Barnum's musical museum, |