grave of paupers. There could be no doubt
about his identity. The collar bore the name
of Tout-laid.

Cows are sensible to the charms of music.
In Switzerland, a milkmaid or man gets better
wages if gifted with a good voice, because it is
found that a cow will yield one-fifth more milk
if soothed during the milking by a pleasing
melody. It might be expected that elephants
would manifest, musical taste. On the 10th of
Prairial, year six, an experimental concert was
given to Hans and Margaret—a proboscidian
pair then residing in the Jardin des Plantes.
The performers were all distinguished artists.
The result was unmistakable. Melodies in a
minor key especially touched their elephantine
hearts; "Ca ira" fired them with transport;
"Charmante Gabrielle " steeped them in languor.
The spell, nevertheless, did not act alike
on both. Margaret became passionately
affectionate; Hans maintained his usual sobriety of
deportment.

The sittings of the National Convention
opened, not with prayers, but with musical
performances. For instance, in the Moniteur
for the year three, it is recorded that, at the
sitting of the 9th ofThermidor, the National
Institute of music executed the hymn to
Humanity, and then the chant of the 9th of
Thermidor, followed by a dithyrambic hymn of
Robespierre's Conspiracy. Girard called for the
Marsellaise; after which and the Invocation to
Harmony, Tallien mounted the tribune to give
an account of the Quiberon expedition. Our
new reformed parliament will perhaps take the
hint; making Yankee Doodle precede an
American debate; Off She Goes, a discussion on
rifled cannon; Flow on thou Shining River,
introduce the budget.

Explosions offer a pretty group of phenomena
which have made considerable noise in the
world. Percy relates that, at the retreat from
Mayence, thirty-six artillery waggons were
blown up. The shock was so terrible that
labouring women died in convulsions.
Baudelocque mentions that, after the explosion of
the Crenelle powder magazine, he was called
to attend seventy-two women dangerously ill.
Schmidt and Mesnard the surgeons assert that,
after the explosion of the arsenal at Landau,
in 1793, out of ninety-two newborn babes, a
great number became idiots, whilst others
dragged out a feeble existence.

The number of cases of deafness produced by
loud and unexpected noise, is immense.
Unusually powerful sounds have been known to
produce giddiness, convulsions, epilepsy,
inflammation; army surgeons continually observe
that wounds get worse and refuse to heal,
when a battle is fought close at hand and
repeated cannonades are heard. At the siege
of Dantzick, the wounded soldiers felt such
violent pains in their amputated stumps, that
they were obliged to support them with their
hands. Wounds in the head, and compound
fractures, became speedily mortal when the patients
could not be removed beyond the influence of
the noise. Animals even are not exempt from
the ill effects of loud reports. After long-continued
cannonades fired on the banks of the
Rhine, the Danube, and the Vistula, shoals of
fish have been taken from these rivers, killed by
the force of the detonations.

On the other hand, there are occasions when
the concussions of sound seem to exercise a
curative influence. A gentleman who is hard of
hearing, residing in the Department of Seine et
Marne, always travels in a third-class railway
carriage, because its rumbling noise enables
him to hear perfectly whatever is said to him
in a low tone of voice, which would be quite
inaudible to him out of the carriage. The
Philosophical Transactions mention the case of
a woman who understood what was said to her,
only when the words spoken were accompanied
by the rolling of a drum. When the drum,
ceased to beat, the deafness returned. Haller
remarked, on opening a patient's vein, that the
blood flowed more abundantly at the beating of
a drum.

Musical rhythm is the recurrence of an accent
or beat at successive regular intervals. It is
marked by what musicians call "keeping time,"
without which there is no good music. But
even without music, there may be rhythm: as in
the ding-dong of a bell, the plash of a water-
wheel, the pulsation of a heart, or the uniform
march of machinery. A railway train often
runs with a rhythm to which you can easily
adapt a tune, of which the engine will mark
the time.* This regular rhythm is pleasing to
the ear, producing a tranquillising and sedative
effect. The restless child is sung to sleep by
the measured movement of its nurse's ditty;
and we have all heard of the miller who could
find no repose until his mill, which had been
stopped on account of his illness, was set agoing
again. In every musical composition, the rhythm
is marked by its division into equal portions
called "bars."

* This was observed of common coaches, by the
Conductor of ALL THE YEAR ROUND, in his Novel,
Nicholas Nickleby.

Rhythm seems to have been the first means
employed, in the infancy of art, to render
agreeable to the ear a succession of sounds
which, without it, would produce little or no
impression. A march beaten by drums is far
from disagreeable, although the noise of those
instruments, without rhythm, would be
unbearable. A simple change of the rhythmical
beats, assists a march and accelerates its pace.
Rhythm sustains and cheers the soldier during
long and fatiguing journeys. Quintilian
ascribed the valour of the Roman legions, in
part to the influence of the horns and trumpets.
When the worn-out column, like a wounded
snake, drags its slow length along, the
commander orders the drums to beat; and the men
step out with renovated vigour. By means of
rhythm, semi-barbarous nations render their
instruments of percussion less wearisome. The
Greeks, at the height of their civilisation, attributed