I repeated these lines in Ariel’s song, and asked the meaning of “after summer.” “Some critics,” said my uncle, “have thought it should be after sunset, because Ariel speaks of riding on the bat; but commentators delight in deep and hidden meanings, and it has therefore been suggested, that as the fairy tribe dislike winter, Ariel, who is now to be restored to liberty, rejoices that he may follow summer round the globe; and therefore he is said to fly after summer.”
17th.—We have been reading the life of that delightful musician, Mozart; and he is claimed by each party. But I think he can give very little support to Mary; for though his father was a teacher of music, and early began to instruct him, his rapid progress and juvenile success seem to have gone far beyond the effect of circumstances, which in a hundred cases have been the same with other musical teachers, and other children. Mozart was but four years old when his great delight was seeking for thirds on the piano-forte. When five, he learned difficult pieces of music from his father so quickly, that he could immediately repeat them; and in the following year he invented little sonatas, which he played for his father, who always wrote them down to encourage him.—Music was introduced into all his sports, none of which were acceptable to him without it; and if sometimes a fondness for the usual occupations of childhood did influence his mind, yet music soon became again the favourite object.
Before he was six years of age, his father, observing him writing busily, asked what he was doing: the little boy said, he was composing a concerto for the harpsichord. The father took the paper, and laughed heartily at the blots and scribbles; but when he examined it with more attention, he shewed it to a friend with tears of delight, saying, “Look, my friend, every thing is composed according to the rules; it is a pity that the piece cannot be made use of, but it is too difficult, nobody would be able to play it.”
The progress of this wonderful child was equal to this beginning, and in various public exhibitions in Germany, and particularly at Vienna, he excited, at a very early age, the astonishment of all musical people by his science, by the correctness of his ear, and by his powerful execution.—At the age of thirteen, he composed his first opera; and you well know, Mamma, the numerous beautiful compositions which distinguished his short life; for he died at the age of thirty-six. Surely this was a genius!
18th, Sunday.—My uncle read to us this morning the chapters which relate the humbling of Pharaoh, and the going forth of the Israelites; he afterwards said, “In the wonderful judgments inflicted on the Egyptians, and in the miraculous institution of the Passover, when the destroying angel passed over the house of every Israelite, we see, my dear children, the operation of that Being whose will controuls the elements of nature, and directs the passions of mankind.
“No human force is exercised—no Israelite lifts the sword; yet the Egyptian monarch is humbled, his people are terrified, and both urge the departure of the Israelites; who even demand and obtain from their late oppressors silver and gold, as payment for their past labours. ‘Rise up and get you forth,’ said Pharaoh, and they immediately commenced their march before his hardened mind again repented of yielding to the decrees of the Almighty.”
Wentworth asked his father how the Israelites could carry their kneading troughs on their shoulders.
“It appears,” said my uncle, “from the accounts of various travellers, that to this day the Arabs, who dwell in the countries through which the Israelites passed, are in the habit of eating unleavened cakes; and that the vessels still used there for kneading them, are small wooden bowls; these you see could be very conveniently bound up in the kneading cloths, and tied on their shoulders. The Arabs have also, among their travelling furniture, a round thick piece of leather, which they lay on the ground, and which serves them to eat upon; round it there is a row of rings, by which it is drawn together with a chain: and it hangs by a hook at the end of the chain to the side of the camel, in travelling. In this leather, they carry their meal made into dough; and when the repast is over, they wrap up in it all the fragments that remain.”
“I wonder,” said Frederick, who was looking at the map, “I wonder, heavily laden as they must have been, that they did not take the shortest road to the promised land, instead of going round about by the Red Sea.”
“The regular route to the promised land,” my uncle replied, “was certainly along the coast of the Mediterranean, towards Gaza and the other cities of Palestine, which were a portion of Canaan, and at no great distance from the Lower Egypt. But the way by which it was the divine will to lead them, was through the Red Sea; as being not only impracticable for their return, but being eminently calculated to impress them with a sense of the miraculous power which guided and protected them through the ‘deep.’”