"I hear a voice you cannot hear, I see a hand you cannot see, All the thoughts and emotions of his last days seem to be concentrated in the strains of that sublime requiem which still bears his name. It is made up of the tenderest and most soothing passages followed by wild bursts of passion, and all is inexpressibly mournful. Thus did the stream of life flow back to the fountain whence it came. Swan-like, he passed away in music, and his requiem, like the swan's death song, is surpassingly sweet. Beethoven, I might mention, whose compositions are like the dark and sublime creations of Salvator Rosa. How sorrowfully do we remember those long and dreary years, when deafness had visited him that silent piano in his study, of which but a single string would respond to the touch of its unconscious master. Dreary and long those years doubtless were to one like him, yet amid that silence of the senses, what harmonies were heard by his soul-for it was during this period, that the sublimest of his masses was composed, which its great author mourned that he might never hear, But perhaps he is now where "the ears of the deaf are unstopped." His death was like a strain of his own music. He did not, like Mozart, compose his own funeral dirge. He had a greater requiem-one worthy his own dark and wild genius-for the elements were at war-the lightning flashing, and the thunder rolling, when the spirit of Beethoven passed from the earth. Even the great names of Handel and Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven can expect but a slight remembrance from a world, which has a passing smile, delusive as it is bright, for her favorite servants, and then coldly forgetful, turns to those who will offer her some new amusement, some fresher novelty. Their abiding fame, their enduring honors are treasured up in their masses and oratorios, their sacred compositions. So shall the names of Sebastian Bach and Pleyel live. Thus Religion is ever wont to honor her servants. While none are too humble for her to exalt, none are too noble for her to invest with a still higher dignity. She asks no sacrifice which she does not repay a thousand fold. She seeks no tribute which does not leave us richer than before. How high is the destiny of Music. Were there no life beyond the present, she, like poetry and the sister arts, would be her "own exceeding great reward." But do we all sleep to wake no more? Oh no-there is another life, and the good shall all live again. This life is but the vestibule of the upper temple to which they hasten. Do we ask "how are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" Shall the eye see, and the ear hear again in the spiritual world? "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." Yet an inspired apostle maketh answer; "Behold I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." "There is a natural body" shrouded in a veil of flesh, its senses dull and slow, itself decaying with age. "There is a spiritual body" wearing no veil of time, with an eye never dim, an ear never dull, with perhaps other spiritual senses which now we know not of. The bonds of sympathy and affection often severed. here, will without doubt be many of them united again in the celestial city. The love of the beautiful, the true and the good, which in many breasts burns with a low and faint, and in others with a restless and fitful flame, shall there glow with ethereal fire; shall find objects worthy its. highest imaginings.. Landscapes are spread out there fairer than those over which sunset has fallen in golden showers from the pencil of a Claude Lorraine. Forms more glorious, and faces of higher intellectual beauty than the chisel of Canova or Thorwaldson has sculptured, give life to those scenes. The wall on which Leonardo da Vinci has painted the "Last Supper" is even now crumbling and its. colors are dim, but its guests are there. The wounds of martyrdom are all healed, and they are strong in immortal youth. Other guests are assembling, who shall at last sit down at a more joyful feast than Da Vinci has traced—his was a funeral-that shall be a marriage supper. The fading canvass and perishing marble shall never more shadow forth Raphael's Madonna, nor the Moses of Michael Angelo. Their originals are there, spiritual bodies now, more glorious than of old. The heirs of Paradise regained shall forget the glories of "Paradise lost," and Milton might wonder at the burning words in which their communion shall be held. When all the bright ideals of art shall thus be realized, Poetry, Painting and Sculpture will be needed no more. Their work ceases with time. For Music is reserved a higher destiny. Her work is but commenced in the present life. Its consummation will require the unending ages of a life to come. To the great themes she has already sung, she shall add one more, for when "This vain world shall pass away, That event celebrated, and she too will have done with time. Then begins her unending song; it has commenced already, it rises now, though our dull senses heed it not, for still "We are spirits clad in veils." Without doubt, some hear it whom we have known. When they leave us here, we follow them with tearful eyes, but they leave no visible path of light to show us where they have gone up through the canopy over us. We follow them with our voices to ask them what they see and hear in the world of spirits, but no answer comes. The silent and mysterious blue only echoes back our questions unanswered, unsatisfied. "All our deep communing fails To remove the shadowy screen." Yet let us pass in thought, for a moment, beyond these mists of time. It is night, solemn night. The earth is dark, for lowering clouds deepen the shades of evening. But beyond those low and damp vapors, how bright are the heavens! The stars are wheeling in their courses-"moving in mystic dance"though to our eyes they seem motionless, like glittering islands sleeping in an ocean of fathomless blue. When astronomy points her telescope toward those azure depths, the nebulae and galaxies we now see resolve themselves into "worlds on worlds in phalanx deep," while far beyond, other nebulae and galaxies before unseen, are revealed numerous and dim as the mists of morning. And it has been supposed, that were our vision sufficiently keen, those blue interstices would appear all filled up with countless orbs. That sapphire arch would become one of the fabled carbuncle, all radiant with quenchless light. The more distant of those starry hosts do not change their apparent position for ages, but they are still in |