(To be continued.)
VARIETIES.
Music run Mad.
“Yes,” says Heine, writing of the piano, “the piano is the instrument of martyrdom whereby the present elegant world is racked and tortured for all its affectations. If only the innocent had not to endure it with them! (Alas! my neighbours next door, two young daughters of Albion, are at this moment practising a brilliant study for two left hands.)
“These sharp, rattling tones, without a natural ‘dying fall’—these heartless, whirling tumults—this archi-prosaic rumbling and tinkling—this pianoforte mania kills all thought and feeling, and we grow stupid, insensible, and imbecile. This hand-over-hand dexterity of the piano—these triumphal processions of piano virtuosi—are characteristic of our time, and prove utterly the triumph of mechanical power over the soul. Technical ability, the precision of an automaton, identification with the wire-strung wooden machine—this sounding instrumentification of humanity, is now lauded and exalted as the highest attainment of man.”
Endless Labour.
“Some respite to husbands the weather may send;
But housewives’ affairs have never an end.”
—Tusser.
An Anagram.—“The best anagram,” says Chevreau, “I have met with is one which was shown me by the Duchess de la Tremouille. She was the sister of the Duc de Bouillon and of Marshal Turenne, and her name was Marie de la Tour—in Spanish, Maria de la Torre—which a Spanish anagrammatist found to be exactly ‘Amor de la Tierra.’”