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ANNUAL REGISTER For the YEAR 1772.

lite arts, is to excite pleasing sensations in the mind; and of doing this, music is greatly capable. The tones are alone sufficient to affect the heart with the sensations of joy, tenderness, love, grief, rage, and despair. In order to do this, it is necessary to invent some simple melody, that is proper to express each passion or sentiment; to sustain that kind of language throughout the whole piece; to prepare the hearers by degrees for the principal action; and, lastly, to labour to give that principal action all the art and all the force of which it is susceptible. 
It is easy, for example, to comprehend a composer's meaning, when he begins a piece of instrumental music with a quick unison, which is followed by a tumultuous passage performed principally by the base, and which, in the midst of the greatest tumult, is sometimes suddenly interrupted by a general pause; and the whole piece perhaps ends abruptly, when it was least expected. It is easy to perceive, that he there means to express the passion of rage. The pleasing sentiments are still more easily expressed, and more readily conveyed to the human heart. They who attend to the effects of a concert, and are capable of discerning, may easily discover, from the looks of the sensible part of the audience, the effects of the interior sensations. All this is meant of instrumental music alone. When the composer has words to express, it is still more easy to produce the proper tones. examples are frequently more instructive than precepts. We shall propose those of one master only. All the sonata's and other pieces of Corelli, are chef-d'oeuvres and models; every composer, who shall carefully study them, will find them of infinite utility, and by them may form his taste. It is not in performing difficulties that the beautiful consists; it is sentiment or passion that the composer should at all times consult, whether it be a concert, sonata, trio, or any piece whatever that he composes for an instrument. Each instrument, moreover, has its bounds, its excellencies and defects, which are likewise to be consulted. A flute, for example is a rural instrument that is not capable of rendering passages in the manner of the violin, and it is striving against nature to attempt it. As each instrument, therefore, has its peculiar beauties, the composer should know then, and endeavour to afford opportunities in which they may be displayed.
It is therefore perfectly obvious, that music ought to address itself to the affections and passions; and that it ought never to be degraded to express difficulties. That music has little merit, where we only admire the execution of the performer.
MUSIDOR.

An Essay on the Modern Novel.

IT is a misfortune incident to human nature, that its finest qualities may be perverted to the most destructive ends. Love, the brightest spark that enlightens the soul, burns frequently for the impurest purposes, and lends its rays too often to inflame the eyes of lust, and to light the adulterer to his couch. Having erected his empire, in a greater or less degree, in every breast, he reigns every-where. There's ne'er a mother's son between this and the Antipodes, from beardless sixteen up to grey-beard sixty, who has not struggled at some period of his life in the Cytherean net, and confessed the power of the blind god. But let them describe the impulses that push them forward into the snare, and you will find they have worshipped some other deity than real love; some usurper, who has borrowed his name and authority. From the beginning it has been so, and to the end it will continue so; for the present age, with all its refinements, is more distant from the knowledge of real love, than were our forefathers of the fifth century.
 It would be an amusing study to a speculative mind, to observe how this fascinating something has played upon the folly and invention of mankind through all ages. It has exhibited its pranks and whimsies in a thousand different scenes, and in every shape that vanity or fancy could devise, has paid its addresses to the heart. love is the Proteus of heaven: and, had the ancients known the full extent of his qualities, and seen what we have seen, no doubt they had given him the proper attributes of that character.
But of all the artillery which love has employed to brighten eyes, and soften hearts, the most effectual and forcible is the Modern Novel. Of all the arrows which Cupid has shot at youthful hearts this is the keenest. There is no resisting it. It is the literary opium, that lulls every sense into delicious rapture; and, respecting the bias of a young lad's mind, one may venture to turn out the Nobles and Robsons, with half a dozen of their greasy combustible duodecimo's, against the nurse, the mother, and the Common-prayer-Book —ay, and they would conquer them too. These gentlemen are real patriots, never-failing friends to the propagation of the human species. They have counteracted all the designs of the British senate against  matrimony; and, in contempt of the marriage act, soft-chaises and young couples run smoothly on the north road. All this, and more, we owe to novels, which have operated like electricity on the great national body, and have raised the humble spirit of citizens to a parallel with the veriest romp of quality in the coterie.
 But what charms all ranks of people in these productions is the manner—Unrestrained by that disgusting simplicity, that timid coyness, which checked the fancies of former ages, the modern muses are stark naked; and it were no vague assertion to declare, that they have contributed more than any other cause to debauch the morals of the young of the fair sex. Novels, according to the practice of the times, are the powerful engines with which the seducer attacks the female heart; and, if we judge from every day's experience, his plots are seldom laid in vain. Never was there an after weapon for so black a purpose. Tricked out in the trappings of taste, a loose and airy dishabille, with a staggering gait and a wanton eye, the modern muse trips jauntily on, the true child of fashion and folly. by tickling the ear, she approaches the heart, and soon ruins it; for, like all other prostitutes, she is plausible and insinuating,

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