We know a conscientious artist on the organ who would no more
perjure his instrument than his lips, but go to the stake sooner than
turn his keys into tongues to captivate a meretricious taste or
transform one breath of the air under his fingers into sympathetic
lying, though thousands should be ready to resound their delight. So was
it with the noble Christian Jew, an Israelite of harmony indeed. The
most sympathetic of vocations, whose appeal more than any other is
direct to the feelings, could not induce him to tell a sympathetic lie.
Would that the writers and speakers of plain English, and of their
mother-tongue in every vernacular, might take example from the
conscientious creator, who would not put a particle of cant into the
crooked marks and ruled bars which are such a mystery to the
uninitiated, blot with one demi-semi-quaver of falsehood his papers, or
leave aught but truth of the heavenly sphere at a single point on any
line! Then our sternest utterance with each other would be concord, our
common questions and answers more melodiously responsive than chants in
great cathedrals, and our lowest whispers like tones caught from angelic
harps.
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