“For this reason is a musical education most essential; since it causes Rhythm and Harmony to penetrate most intimately into the soul, taking the strongest hold upon it, filling it with beauty and making the man beautiful-minded. ...  He will praise and admire the beautiful, will receive it with joy into his soul, will feed upon it, and assimilate his own condition with it.”

Ibid. lib. 3.  Music had, however, among the Athenians, a far more comprehensive signification than with us.  It included not only the harmonies of time and of tune, but the poetic diction, sentiment and creation, each in its widest sense.  The study of music was with them, in fact, the general cultivation of the taste—­of that which recognizes the beautiful—­in contradistinction from reason, which deals only with the true.]

* * * * *

THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION.

  I will bring fire to thee.

  Euripides.—­’Androm’.

‘Eiros’.

  Why do you call me Eiros?

‘Charmion’.

  So henceforward will you always be called.  You must forget, too, my
  earthly name, and speak to me as Charmion.

‘Eiros’.

  This is indeed no dream!

‘Charmion’.

Dreams are with us no more;—­but of these mysteries anon.  I rejoice to see you looking life-like and rational.  The film of the shadow has already passed from off your eyes.  Be of heart, and fear nothing.  Your allotted days of stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself induct you into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence.

‘Eiros’.

True—­I feel no stupor—­none at all.  The wild sickness and the terrible darkness have left me, and I hear no longer that mad, rushing, horrible sound, like the “voice of many waters.”  Yet my senses are bewildered, Charmion, with the keenness of their perception of the new.

‘Charmion’.

A few days will remove all this;—­but I fully understand you, and feel for you.  It is now ten earthly years since I underwent what you undergo—­yet the remembrance of it hangs by me still.  You have now suffered all of pain, however, which you will suffer in Aidenn.

‘Eiros’.

  In Aidenn?

‘Charmion’.

  In Aidenn.

‘Eiros’.

  O God!—­pity me, Charmion!—­I am overburthened with the majesty of all
  things—­of the unknown now known—­of the speculative Future merged in
  the august and certain Present.

‘Charmion’.

Grapple not now with such thoughts.  To-morrow we will speak of this.  Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find relief in the exercise of simple memories.  Look not around, nor forward—­but back.  I am burning with anxiety to hear the details of that stupendous event which threw you among us.  Tell me of it.  Let us converse of familiar things, in the old familiar language of the world which has so fearfully perished.

‘Eiros’.