Various

“ The true principles on which keys are related proved so elastic in the hands of Beethoven that their results utterly outstripped the earlier theory which adhered desperately to the limitations of the 16th century; and so vast is the range of key which Beethoven is able to organize in a convincing scheme of relationship, that even modern theory, dazzled by the true harmonic possibilities, is apt to come to the conclusion, more lame and impotent than any ancient pedantry, that all keys are equally related. ”

“ But the major triad and its inversion are not the only concords that will be produced by our flux of melodies. From time to time this flux will arrest attention by producing a combination which, while it does not appeal to the ear as being a part of the harmonic chord of nature, yet contains in itself no elements not already present in the major triad. ”

“ The English common law, with all the absurdities and rigours of that day, was arbitrarily extended to an alien system of society. Zamíndárs, or government renters, were arrested on mesne process; the sanctity of the zenána, or women’s chamber, as dear to Hindus as to Mahommedans, was violated by the sheriff’s officer; the deepest feelings of the people and the entire fabric of revenue administration were alike disregarded. On this point the entire council acted in harmony. Hastings and Francis went joint-bail for imprisoned natives of distinction. ”

“ Theorists have in vain tried to find in “nature” a combination of a note with its minor 3rd and perfect 5th; and so long as harmony was treated unhistorically and unscientifically as an a priori theory in which every chord must needs have a “root,” the minor triad, together with nearly every other harmonic principle of any complexity, remained a mystery. But the minor triad, as an artistic and not purely acoustic phenomenon, is an inevitable thing. It has the character of a concord because of our intellectual perception that it contains the same elements as the major triad ”

“ Just intonation is a reality in so far as it emphasizes the contrast between concord and discord; but when it forbids artistic interaction between harmony and melody it is a chimera. It is sometimes said that Bach, by the example of his forty-eight preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys, first fixed the modern scale. ”

“ This system of equal temperament, with twelve equal semitones in the octave, obviously annihilates important distinctions, and in the most used keys it sours the concords and blunts the discords more than unequal temperament; but it is never harsh; and where it does not express harmonic subtleties the ear instinctively supplies the interpretation; as the observing faculty, indeed, always does wherever the resources of art indicate more than they express. ”

“ Hastings’s public career will probably never cease to be a subject of controversy. It was his misfortune to be the scapegoat upon whose head parliament laid the accumulated sins, real and imaginary, of the East India Company. If the acquisition of the Indian empire can be supported on ethical grounds, Hastings needs no defence. No one who reads his private correspondence will admit that even his least defensible acts were dictated by dishonourable motives. ”

“ The modern sense of tonality is so firm, and modern designs so large, that it is desirable that different portions of a composition should be arranged round different harmonic centres or keys, and moreover that the relation between these keys and the primary key should be felt, and the whole design should at last return to the primary key, to remain there with such emphasis and proportion as shall leave upon the mind the impression that the whole is in the primary key and that the foreign keys have been as artistically grouped around it as its own local harmonies. ”

“ The conception of the Unconscious, by which von Hartmann describes his ultimate metaphysical principle, is not at bottom as paradoxical as it sounds, being merely a new and mysterious designation for the Absolute of German metaphysicians. The Unconscious appears as a combination of the metaphysic of Hegel with that of Schopenhauer. The Unconscious is both Will and Reason and the absolute all-embracing ground of all existence. Von Hartmann thus combines “pantheism” with “panlogism” in a manner adumbrated by Schelling in his “positive philosophy.” ”

“ The impression of identity thus produced is so strong that we often find among people unacquainted with music a firm conviction that a man is singing in unison with a boy or an instrument when he is really singing in the octave below. And even musical people find a difficulty in realizing more than a certain brightness and richness of single tone when a violinist plays octaves perfectly in tune and with a strong emphasis on the lower notes. Doubling in octaves therefore never was and never will be a process of harmonization. ”

“ I. Concord and Discord.—By means of harmony modern music has attained the dignity of an independent art. In ancient times, as at the present day among nations that have not come under the influence of European music, the harmonic sense was, if not altogether absent, at all events so obscure and undeveloped as to have no organizing power in the art. The formation by the Greeks of a scale substantially the same as that which has received our harmonic system shows a latent harmonic sense, but shows it in a form which positively excludes harmony as an artistic principle. ”

“ He begins his treatise by pointing out the many inconsistencies and defects in the Galenical theory, quoting the writings of Galen himself, of Fabricius, Columbus and others, with great respect, but with unflinching criticism. For, in his own noble language, wise men must learn anatomy, not from the decrees of philosophers, but from the fabric of nature herself, “nec ita in verba jurare antiquitatis magistrae, ut veritatem amicam in apertis relinquant, et in conspectu omnium deserant.” ”

“ Astute and unscrupulous manipulation of the stock markets, and a capacity for the hardest of bargaining and the most determined warfare against his rivals, had their place in this success, and Harriman’s methods excited the bitterest criticism, culminating in a stern denunciation from President Roosevelt himself in 1907. Nevertheless, besides acquiring colossal wealth for himself, he helped to create for the American public a vastly improved railway service, the benefit of which survived all controversy as to the means by which he triumphed over the obstacles in his way. ”

“ In organization and scope of effort Harvard has grown, especially after 1869, under the direction of President Charles W. Eliot, to be in the highest sense a university; but the “college” proper, whose end is the liberal culture of undergraduates, continues to be in many ways the centre of university life, as it is the embodiment of university traditions. The medical school (in Boston) dates from 1782, the law school from 1817, the divinity school1 (though instruction in theology was of course given from the foundation of the college) from 1819, and the dental school (in Boston) from 1867. ”

“ In the earliest attempts at really contrapuntal writing (the astonishing 13th and 14th-century motets, in which voices are made to sing different melodies at once, with what seems to modern ears a total disregard of sound and sense) we find that the method consists in a kind of rough-hewing by which the concords of the octave, 5th and 4th are provided at most of the strong accents, while the rest of the harmony is left to take care of itself. As the art advanced the imperfect concords began to be felt as different from the discords ”

“ Contrary and Unconnected Keys.—There remain only two pairs of keys that classical music has not brought into connexion, a circumstance which has co-operated with the utter vagueness of orthodox theories on the subject to confirm the conventionally progressive critic in his conviction that all modulations are alike. We have seen how the effect of modulation from major tonic to minor supertonic is, on a large scale, obscured by the identity of the primary dominant with the secondary subdominant, though the one chord is major and the other minor. ”

“ An old Welsh harp, not triple strung, exists, which bears a great resemblance to the Irish harp in neck, soundboard and soundholes. But this does not imply derivation of the harp of Wales from that of Ireland or the reverse. There is really no good historical evidence, and there may have been a common or distinct origin on which ethnology only can throw light.6 The Welsh like the Irish harp was often an hereditary instrument to be preserved with great care and veneration, and used by the bards of the family, who were alike the poet-musicians and historians. ”

“ In order to vote for Representatives or Senators, the elector must be a male citizen of the United States who has attained the age of twenty-one years, has lived in the Territory not less than one year preceding, and is able to speak, read and write the English or Hawaiian language. No person is allowed to vote by reason of being in or attached to the army or navy. The executive power is vested in a governor, appointed by the president and holding office for four years. He must not be less than thirty-five years of age and must be a citizen of the Territory. ”

“ Hartmann’s most conspicuous merit as a poet lies in his style; his language is carefully chosen, his narrative lucid, flowing and characterized by a sense of balance and proportion which is rarely to be found in German medieval poetry. Gregorius, Der arme Heinrich and his lyrics, which are all fervidly religious in tone, imply a tendency towards asceticism, but, on the whole, Hartmann’s striving seems rather to have been to reconcile the extremes of life; to establish a middle way of human conduct between the worldly pursuits of knighthood and the ascetic ideals of medieval religion. ”

“ When the greater part of the Will in existence is so far enlightened by reason as to perceive the inevitable misery of existence, a collective effort to will non-existence will be made, and the world will relapse into nothingness, the Unconscious into quiescence. ”

“ The relation of the final note of a scale with its upper 5th or lower 4th thus becomes a fundamental fact of complex harmonic significance—that is to say, of harmony modified by melody in so far as it concerns the succession of sounds as well as their simultaneous combination. In our modern key-system the final note of the scale is called the tonic, and the 5th above or 4th below it is the dominant. ”

“ The fleet was much weakened by ill-health. In June 1756 the news of John Byng’s retreat from Minorca reached England and aroused the utmost indignation. Hawke was at once sent out to relieve him in the Mediterranean command, and to send him home for trial. He sailed in the “Antelope,” carrying, as the wits of the day put it, “a cargo of courage” to supply deficiencies in that respect among the officers then in the Mediterranean. Minorca had fallen, from want of resources rather than the attacks of the French, before he could do anything for the assistance of the garrison of Fort St Philip. ”

“ Taking A minor as our standard key, G major is then the flat 7th to A minor. The remaining major keys (C major to E minor = F major to A minor) may be traced directly as well as conversely; and the subdominant, being minor, does not involve an appeal to the major scale at all. But with the dominant we find the curious fact that while the dominant chord of a minor key is major it is impossible to regard the major dominant key as directly related to the minor tonic, since it does not contain the minor tonic chord at all; e.g. the only chord of A in E major is A major. ”

“ HARRIER, or Hen-Harrier, name given to certain birds of prey which were formerly very abundant in parts of the British Islands, from their habit of harrying poultry. The first of these names has now become used in a generic sense for all the species ranked under the genus Circus of Lacépède, and the second confined to the particular species which is the Falco cyaneus of Linnaeus and the Circus cyaneus of modern ornithologists. ”

“ The pressing demands of the military chest had to be satisfied by loans, and in at least one case from the private purse of the governor-general. Ready cash could alone fill up the void; and it was to the hoards of native princes that Hastings’s fertile mind at once turned. Chait Sing, raja of Benares, the greatest of the vassal chiefs who had grown rich under the protection of the British rule, lay under the suspicion of disloyalty. ”

“ All the officers of administration were transferred from Murshidabad to Calcutta, which Hastings boasted at this early date that he would make the first city in Asia. This reform involved the ruin of many native reputations, and for a second time brought Hastings into collision with the wily Brahman, Nuncomar. At the same time a settlement of the land revenue on leases for five years was begun, and the police and military systems of the country were placed upon a new footing. Hastings was a man of immense industry, with an insatiable appetite for detail. ”

“ As a religious teacher, literary critic, historian and jurist, Mr Harrison took a prominent part in the life of his time, and his writings, though often violently controversial on political and social subjects, and in their judgment and historical perspective characterized by a modern Radical point of view, are those of an accomplished scholar, and of one whose wide knowledge of literature was combined with independence of thought and admirable vigour of style. ”

“ He can amply satisfy men of taste and culture; he cannot, like Coleridge or Burke, dissatisfy them with themselves by showing them how much they would have missed without him. He is a critic who exhibits, rather than reveals, the beauties of an author. But all shortcomings are forgotten in the genuineness and fervour of the writer’s self-portraiture. The intensity of his personal convictions causes all he wrote to appear in a manner autobiographic. Other men have been said to speak like books, Hazlitt’s books speak like men. ”

“ The work on which he had been chiefly engaged at Oxford, and indeed since the publication of his treatise on the circulation in 1628, was an investigation into the recondite but deeply interesting subject of generation. Charles I. had been an enlightened patron of Harvey’s studies, had put the royal deer parks at Windsor and Hampton Court at his disposal, and had watched his demonstration of the growth of the chick with no less interest than the movements of the living heart. Harvey had now collected a large number of observations, though he would probably have delayed their publication. ”

“ The first efficient machinery for making felt hats was devised in America, and from the United States the machine-making processes were introduced into England about the year 1858; and now in all large establishments machinery such as that alluded to below is employed. For the forming of hat bodies two kinds of machine are used, according as the material employed is fur or wool. In the case of fur, the essential portion of the apparatus is a “former,” consisting of a metal cone of the size and form of the body or bat to be made, perforated all over with small holes. ”