PROEM.


_Mendelssohn's "Elijah."_
[Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el,
slumbers not, nor sleeps.]

From the high Cathedral tower the solemn assurance floated forth to be a
warning, or a promise, according to the mental state of those whose ears
it filled; and the mind, familiar with the phrase, continued it
involuntarily, carrying the running accompaniment, as well as the words
and the melody, on to the end. After the last reverberation of the last
stroke of every hour had died away, and just when expectation had been
succeeded by the sense of silence, they rang it out by day and night--the
bells--and the four winds of heaven by day and night spread it abroad over
the great wicked city, and over the fair flat country, by many a tiny
township and peaceful farmstead and scattered hamlet, on, on, it was said,
to the sea--to the sea, which was twenty miles away!

But there were many who doubted this; though good men and true, who knew
the music well, declared they had heard it, every note distinct, on summer
evenings when they sat alone on the beach and the waves were still; and it
sounded then, they said, like the voice of a tenor who sings to himself
softly in murmurous monotones. And some thought this must be true, because
those who said it knew the music well, but others maintained that it could
not be true just for that very reason; while others again, although they
confessed that they knew nothing of the distance sound may travel under
special circumstances, ventured, nevertheless, to assert that the chime