as In the present case M. Reinach has | ius. So it seems to have been with determined from Alypius the scale the Greeks. We never hear of a great (Phrygian) and its component notes, composer among them. In their best which corresponds to our scale of C days the tragic or lyric poet was also a minor in its melodic form, with some composer, and set the tunes for his accidentals introduced in one passage. odes. This is precisely according to The pitch is a more difficult question. the modern theory of Wagner; As printed by M. Reinach, the range is Wagner was a great musician but a too high for any chest voice, but he mediocre poet, so I take Eschylus and believes that the ancient practical pitch Euripides to have been great poets but was one-third lower than that assigned mediocre composers. Had the art of to this scale by the late theorists. The music been really developed, we should time is given by the metre, which is doubtless have heard of a division of pæonic, a long syllable and three short, labor, and the composer would have variously placed, or two long and a assumed a distinct position. The theshort between them in every case orists did so, and have left us a valuin the bar, a measure strange to us, and able body of writings from which the very difficult to observe. We fall natu- | early medieval music derived its prinrally into g. As regards the accompa- ciples, and from which our modern niment or harmonizing of the air, there theory of harmony is directly deis none extant. We turn then, lastly, scended. So then the Greeks were our to the melody, which is far the most forefathers in music, but nevertheless important item in giving us an insight they were bad composers. This is my into an old Greek performance. I own conclusion, and I shall be only too grieve to say that though there is ready to modify or abandon it whenrhythm, and even a recurrence of ever any Greek composition is produced phrases to mark the close of a period, to refute it. As yet our evidence is nothing worthy of being called melody very defective; the specimens we have in any modern sense is to be found. are fragmentary and interrupted by The ingenuity of modern theorists is gaps; perhaps it were wiser to suspend no doubt equal to finding harmonies our judgment and wait for fuller defor any phrase, however awkward; but tails. Yet the new text seems suffithe fact remains that this music is cient for a judgment, and I cannot wholly unlike any modern music, East- believe that if all the missing notes ern or Western, and that moderns can were recovered the complete composifeel no chord within them moved by it. tion would be anything else than hidOur first instinct, when we consider eous from a modern point of view. the perfection of all the branches of Having now reviewed a very wide Greek art which we know, is to say field and enumerated many striking that we have not interpreted this de- novelties, it may be asked why I have partment, and that it seems inferior to not recounted the discoveries of the the rest because we do not understand American and English schools at Athit. A long study of the extant frag- ens. The cause is merely this: that ments and of the theoretical tracts when I recently visited Athens the exleads me to think that this is not so, cavations of the American school, in and that Greek music was inferior to the absence of Dr. Waldstein, were in their other arts. Other nations have abeyance, though their hospitalities shown the same inequality of develop-and their educational influences were ment. Japanese magnates, who fully in full swing. It is peculiarly the funcappreciated the pre-eminent gifts of tion of this school, more than of the their nation in designing and in color-others, to bring American scholars into ing, have said that when they heard a general contact with Greek antiquities good concert of European music they from which they are by nature so far conceded that in music the Japanese removed, and in this way much valuhad done nothing worthy of their gen-able educational work is being done which does not afford topics for an ar- so promising as Alexandria. The reaticle on novelties. Yet Dr. Waldstein's sons for this forecast have already been researches at the Heræon, near Argos, stated in this article; I have no doubt are recent and striking enough to jus- that the school would receive a warm tify that school to the world as a school welcome from the Archæological Sociof research; and if I do not now de- ety of Alexandria, and every facility scribe that work more in detail, it is from the controller of antiquities in rather for want of space than for any Egypt. I will only repeat that as refailure in its interest. The materials gards this city it is now or never. The already reviewed are indeed enough ground still lies open. In a few years for a single article. it will be taken up with building, and the great city of the Ptolemies will be hidden, till the modern city sinks into ruins, and some far-distant Schliemann finds old Alexandria, like ancient Ilion, the first or second stratum of occupation on a soil which has accumulated But I cannot conclude without a word upon the position and prospects of the British school at Athens, which is at the same time an example of the neglect of the English authorities and of the liberality of English citizens. Beside the German and French schools, layer upon layer of subsequent buildeach supported by State grants, the ing. British must depend on the continu J. P. MAHAFFY. From Temple Bar. VOLTAIRE'S FAVORITE MORALIST. I would fain add another page on the ance of wealth and of good-will among possibilities of Cyrene, but trust that a few private individuals, or among the we shall soon hear of such successes corporations of Oxford and Cambridge. | there by the private enterprise of an Although the school has had to strug-adventurous traveller that forecasts and gle against the inadequacy of means, arguments will be cast aside in the the recent work done, especially Mr. presence of startling facts. Schultz's drawings and plans of the public buildings of Megalopolis, is recognized as very good. But it is plain that Athens is about the worst choice for a centre, seeing that the place is already occupied by powerful, though friendly, rivals. It was a mistake to VOLTAIRE was an incomparable build a house at Athens. The school writer and a critic who delighted in should have been located in a small detecting spots on contemporary suns. steam yacht, which could have anchored He dreaded rivalry, and shrank from in the fiords or among the islands, and rendering homage to a living superior. thus brought the library and other He was wanting in that magnanimity property of the excavators close to the which hails the greatness of a rival scene of their labors. Now they have when it threatens to overshadow his not only the house in Athens to keep own reputation. Yet his literary suup; they must bring tents or hire lodg-premacy, which no one ventures to ing wherever they go for research. I challenge now, was not universally need not add that they could have acknowledged during his lifetime. He crossed to Asia Minor, and searched too, had his enemies and detractors,' the coasts and islands under Turkish and the bitterness of his comments was sway. Perhaps some day the heads of the Hellenic Society will see the sense of this suggestion, or some liberal rich man who is abandoning the habit of yachting will give his boat to the society. in keeping with that of the attacks to which he was subjected, with the addition of a brilliancy which was his distinguishing merit, and of an unscrupulousness which was his less honorable characteristic. Meanwhile there is little doubt that The only contemporary magician to the school would do better to move whose spell Voltaire willingly yielded from Athens, and, if so, I see no place was the Marquis de Vauvenargues, For my who wrote very little, and who died in tion, virtue appears without bounds and poverty before he had completed his pleasure without infamy, wit without affecthirty-second year. Students of French tation, haughtiness without vanity, vice literature have always valued Vauve- without vileness and disguise. nargues' writings; but for many years own part I wept for joy when reading these after his death he was little more than "Lives;" I did not pass a night without a name to the general public. Some others; I entered the Forum to harangue speaking of Alcibiades, Agesilaus, and of his maxims are current, yet the with the Gracchi and to defend Cato when man himself has scarcely attracted the stones were cast at him. notice which was his due. His name and works are now certain to become familiar to thousands who have had a shadowy knowledge and imperfect appreciation of them, as he is included in Messrs. Hachette's series of great French writers. Even those who are familiar with many of Vauvenargues' maxims may have no conception of his life, and I am inclined to regard the lesson of his life as instructive as any thing which flowed from his pen. He was noble by birth, the seat of his family being at Aix, the capital of Provence, where he was born on the 6th of August, 1715. His father was the chief magistrate of Aix when the plague broke out in 1720, and he not only did his duty most zealously during the period of panic and suffering, but he had the distinction of remaining at his post when all his colleagues had fled. Little is known about Vauvenargues' earlier years, except that his health was so delicate he was unable to study with regularity at the High School of Aix. He did not learn Latin or Greek, but at the age of sixteen he made the acquaintance of a book translated from the Greek, which exercised a powerful influence over him. This book contained the "Lives of Plutarch." He read it with a delight which was akiu to intoxication. Vauvenargues was hardly less affected by translations of Seneca's works and of Brutus's letters to Cicero, which also fell into his hands. of a profession, he had to decide When the time came for the choice whether he would enter the church or the army. He determined to become a soldier, and he had the good fortune to in the King's Own Regiment of inobtain a commission as sub-lieutenant fantry. He soon saw hard fighting in Italy, where his regiment distinguished itself. Hostilities having lasted three years, peace was made in May, 1736, when the regiment returned to perform garrison duty in France. Vauvenargues was then twenty-one, and he active pursuit of glory in the field to felt and lamented the change from the the monotonous round of daily duties in a barrack. The lives of officers during peace are not always exempt from temptations which cannot easily be resisted, and Vauvenargues was not a pattern of unbending morality. He frankly confesses that, for a time, his conduct was on a par with his years and his opportunities; but he differed from his comrades in not finding real pleasure in what gave them all the gratification which they desired. Ten years later he wrote to the Marquis of Mirabeau this description of his feelings : — He found in books a solace which gaming or other dissipations did not give him. There was no pretence of superior virtue in The book turned my head. Genius and his abstinence from the occupations in virtue are nowhere better depicted; one which they took delight. He had an may obtain from it a tincture of the history ideal which was not theirs, and that sides, it is difficult to estimate the force was the pursuit of glory. When he and extent of the human mind and heart could not follow it as a soldier in the except in these fortunate ages; liberty lays field, he resolved to acquire it by the bare, even when crime is carried to excess, pursuit of letters. the true grandeur of our soul; the force of Without neglecting his military nature then shines in the bosom of corrup-duties, he gave his mind to the study of Greece and even that of Rome. Be popular professor of physic was an unscrupulous and greedy quack. of literature, and he committed to the 27th of March, 1740, he wrote: "I paper the result of his reflections. His entertain the notion of making an exfriend Mirabeau, the father of the cursion to England in order to see that orator, pressed him to devote his time flourishing State, and also to consult entirely to letters, and to take up his the best physicians there about my abode in Paris, where he would find eyes, which are in a bad way, and have congenial associates and useful oppor- a prejudicial effect upon my humor, tunities such as he would seek in vain which is worse than my eyes." His at Verdun, where his regiment was faith in the medical faculty of Montquartered. The lot of Vauvenargues pellier must have been as great as in was hard. While ardently ambitious that of London. This is shown by the of glory, and debarred from seeking it following request to the Marquis de with the sword, he was too poor to Villevielle: "Let me know if you are begin a new career in Paris and ex- at Montpellier, so that I can send you a change his sword for the pen. His pay statement of my ailments, which you as captain in a crack regiment served may show to your physicians there." to maintain him, and that was all. His A quarter of a century later, Smollett family could not help him. Though a went to Montpellier for counsel as to noble by birth, he had no private for- his infirmities, and he left the city tune. It was considered derogatory under the impression that the most that one of his rank should work for money in any profession save that of arms. In this extremity he imagined an expedient which is the strangest that ever entered the heart of an impecunious and inexperienced young man. It must be added that his health was weak, and that he longed for the medical advice which was then obtainable in Paris alone. The desire of his heart, therefore, was to visit the capital of his country. The problem which baffled him was how to find the money for the journey. He was acquainted with an M. d'Oraison, who had several daughters, and, it may be inferred, an ample fortune. His purpose, as he informed his friend Saint-Vincens, was to engage to marry one of them within a year or two, and to be contented with a small dowry, conditionally on M. d'Oraison lending him a sum equal to eighty pounds, and not being repaid at the appointed time. It has been supposed that this project was a mere 1 joke; yet there is no reason for seriously doubting that Vauvenargues was in earnest. 1 1 1 t Vauvenargues succeeded in borrowing a portion of the money wherewith to visit Paris, the lender benig the archdeacon of the cathedral at Sisteron in the Lower Alps. Lending money at usury was forbidden, the result being that the interest charged was proportioned to the risk. His anxiety to repay the loan was equal to his trouble in obtaining it. His visit to Paris did not last many months. He was the better in health for the change, and he would have enjoyed it the more if monetary considerations had not continued to torment him. Soon after leaving Paris he had another taste of war on a grand scale in its most trying form. His regiment was ordered in March, 1741, to leave Metz and join the army under the command of Marshal de Belle-Isle, which took part with that of the Elector of Bavaria against Maria Theresa. The first operations were crowned with marvellous success, the city of Prague being occupied by the Vauvenargues suffered from weak- French as the result of a daring attack. 2 ness of sight, and he desired to visit But the victors had a brief triumph, London as well as Paris, in the hope of being besieged in turn immediately receiving good advice from physicians. after their success, and not feeling He longed to see England, of which he themselves capable of holding out had formed a high opinion. In a letter unless relieved, evacuated the city on from Verdun to Saint-Vincens, dated the night of the 16th of December, e e 1742, amid intense cold. A dense fog | tures, but even the prefaces to his tragedies favored their retreat to Eger. The and this is no exaggeration. In 1743, after returning from the campaign in Bohemia, and recruiting his shattered health before proceeding to that in Germany, he wrote to Voltaire from Nancy, asking his aid to settle a dispute as to whether Corneille or Racine was the greater man. ended his letter, which was a most ingenious piece of comparative criticism, by saying: He force then numbered fifteen thousand. It was pursued by an active and enterprising enemy, and the commander-inchief sought safety for his army by following an unexplored route and forcing a passage through woods which had been deemed impenetrable, and over hills which no such body of men had ever crossed. The city of Eger was reached after a ten days' march, in the course of which half the effecI might write at greater length on this tive force perished, the retreat showing subject if I could forget to whom it is on a small scale what was afterwards addressed. Pray, sir, forgive the absurdity presented on a colossal one when Bo- of so many opinions, which are as badly set naparte fled from Moscow. Vauve- forth as they are presumptuous, from one nargues had both his legs frost-bitten. of my age and profession. I have passionAfter spending several weeks in a hos-ately desired all my life the honor of seeing pital, he recovered sufficiently to rejoin you, and I am delighted to have an opporhis regiment in March, 1743, and to tunity in this letter of assuring you, at take part in the war waged by France | least, of the natural inclination and the against the allied forces of Austria and ingenuous admiration which render me, from the bottom of my heart, your very England. humble and most obedient servant. The army to which the King's Own Voltaire's reply was as long as the Regiment was attached had the mortification to be defeated at Dettingen, letter which he received, and both are where Vauvenargues fought with brav interesting. The substance of what ery at the head of his company, and Voltaire wrote may suffice. He began where George II. displayed a gallantry by stating that he had never met with in the field which gave great satis- anything which was more acute and faction to his English subjects. At profound regarding a matter of taste the close of 1743, Vauvenargues had than what he had received. He exreturned to France with his regiment, pressed his regret that Vauvenargues' which was quartered at Arras. His professional duty as a soldier hindered health, which had never been robust, him from living in Paris, where Volwas now completely broken. The sores taire might profit by his learning, and in his frost-bitten legs reopened; his he sent him a copy of his works in eyesight began to fail, till he feared token of his admiration. The answer that he would lose it altogether, and, returned by Vauvenargues contained a though he was not more than twenty-manly defence of his views in reply to some objections which had been urged nine, his bodily sufferings were SO great as to preclude the hope that his by Voltaire, as well as a grateful aclife would be prolonged beyond middle knowledgment of the kindness which I sometimes think of Voltaire, whose taste is so acute, brilliant, and extended, and whom I see scorned daily by persons who are unworthy to read, I will not say he had received from him whom he desire: Sir, I have long put off thanking you for his "Henriade" and other animated pic-the portrait which you have been good |