refections of the gods, and which will be remembered with no other regret than that they will never more return. On such occasions I have seen him walk up and down the room and with his flute extemporize the sweetest music ever vouchsafed to mortal ear. At such times it would seem as if his soul were in a trance, and could only find existence, expression, in the ecstacy of tone, that would catch our souls with his into the very seventh heaven of harmony. Or in merry mood, I have seen him take a banjo, for he could play on any instrument, and as with deft fingers he would strike some strange new note or chord, you would see his eyes brighten, he would begin to smile and laugh as if his very soul were tickled, while his hearers would catch the inspiration, and an old-fashioned 'walkround' and 'negro breakdown,' in which all would participate, would be the inevitable result. At other

times, with our musical instruments, we would sally forth into the night and 'neath moon and stars and under 'Bonny Bell window panes 'ah, those serenades! were there ever or will there ever be anything like them again?-when the velvet flute notes of Lanier would fall pleasantly upon the night, and The bosom of that harmony,

And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild rose blown Had fluttered down that pool of tone, And floated down the glassy tide, And clarified and glorified,

The solemn spaces where shadows bide. And then on Saturdays we would walk through the groves and the 'gospeling glooms' of the woods, where every sound was a joy and inspiration. I have never seen one who enjoyed nature more than he. And his love for her was so intense that I have sometimes imagined he could hear the murmur, the music, that springs from the growing of

grass.

All tree-sounds, rustling of pine cones, Wind sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly undertones."

More than once at this period do we hear of this trance state while he was playing. Apparently unconscious, he would seem to hear the richest music; or again he would awake from a deep trance, alone, on the floor of his room, and the nervous strain would leave him sad

ly shaken in nerves. For this reason his father prevailed upon him to devote himself to the flute rather than to the violin, for it was the violin voice that above all others commanded his soul. In after years more than one listener remarked the strange violin effects which he conquered from the flute.

As a student at college he gave his spare time chiefly to musical practice and to reading. He had earlier read Scott, Froissart, "Gil Blas," Mayne Reid, "Don Quixote," "Reynard the Fox," and per

haps some of the eighteenth century English writers. But now he roamed at will in a wider field, and took his delight in Shakespeare, Landor, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Schiller, Carlyle, Tennyson, etc. "There was one thing remarkable about Lanier as a student at college,” adds Mr. Newell: "Although passionately fond of music, both in theory and in practice, even at that early age conceded by all who had the pleasure of hearing him as the finest of flute players; although he was ever ready to show his love for nature and art in their various forms and manifestations, yet he was a persistent student, an omnivorous reader of books, and in his college classes was easily first in mathematics as well as in his other studies. He loved all the sciences. The purest fountains of Greek and Roman literature had nourished and fed his youthful mind. But even at that early age I recall how he delight

En

ed in the quaint and curious of our old literature. I remember that it was he who introduced me to that rare old book, Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' whose name and size had frightened me as I first saw it on the shelves, but which I found to be wholly different from what its title would indicate; and old Jeremy Taylor, 'the poet - preacher;' and Keats's dymion' and 'Chatterton,' the 'marvelous boy who perished in his pride.' Yes, I first learned the story of the Monk Rowley and his wonderful poems with Lanier. And Shelley and Coleridge and Christopher North, and that strange, weird poem of The Ettrick Shepherd' of 'How Kilmeny Came Hame,' and a whole sweet host and noble company, 'rare and complete.' Yes, Tennyson, with his Locksley Hall' and his In Memoriam' and his 'Maud,' which last we almost knew by heart. And then old Carlyle with his Sartor

154