Providence gave originally to man a beautiful and a perfect world. He
filled it with things necessary and things delightful. And yet man has
often turned these from their true and original design. The very wood on
the surface of the earth he has cut down, and the very stone and metal
in its bowels he has hewn and cast, and converted into a graven image,
and worshipped in the place of his beneficent Creator. The food, which
has been given him for his nourishment, he has frequently converted by
his intemperance into the means of injuring his health. The wine that
was designed to make his heart glad on reasonable and necessary
occasions, he has used often to the stupefaction of his senses, and the
degradation of his moral character. The very raiment, which has been
afforded him for his body, he has abused also, so that it has frequently
become a source for the excitement of his pride.

Just so it has been, and so it is, with music at the present day.

Music acts upon our senses, and may be made productive of a kind of
natural delight, for in the same manner as we receive, through the organ
of the eye, a kind of involuntary pleasure, when we look at beautiful
arrangements, or combinations, or proportions, in nature, and the
pleasure may be said to be natural, so the pleasure is neither less, nor
less involuntary, nor less natural, which we receive, through the organ
of the ear, from a combination of sounds flowing in musical progression.

The latter pleasure, as it seems natural, so, under certain limitations,
it seems innocent. The first tendency of music, I mean of instrumental,
is to calm and tranquillize the passions. The ideas, which it excites,
are of the social, benevolent, and pleasant kind. It leads occasionally
to joy, to grief, to tenderness, to sympathy, but never to malevolence,
ingratitude, anger, cruelty, or revenge. For no combination of musical