æolian harp

“ In later times the Æolian harp has been improved by Messrs. Frost and Kastner, whose apparatus is represented in Fig. 2. It consists of a rectangular box with two sounding boards, each provided with eight catgut strings. In order to limit the current of air and to bring it with more force against the strings, two wings are adapted near the thin surfaces opposed to the wind, so that the current may reach each group of cords on passing through the narrow aperture between the obliquely inclined wing and the body of the instrument. ”

“ The case is freely perforated, and is hung so as to half overlap the aperture which gives admittance to the air.
Fig. 4.
Kircher for a long time had the credit of being the inventor of the Æolian harp, but it is of much earlier date. It is, in truth, a very obvious contrivance, easily made, and not susceptible of much improvement. In our last figure we give its latest form, which differs from the others only in the arrangement of the screens. These are devised to throw a strong draught on to the strings, without having to be fitted into a window frame ”

“ There it stands so strong and sturdy, and yet so beautiful, a very type of the best sort of man. How proudly it lifts its bare head to the winter storms, and with what a full heart it rejoices when the spring has come again! How grand its voice is, too, when it talks with the wind: a thousand aeolian harps cannot equal the beauty of the sighing of a great tree in leaf. ”

“ All pianists and manufacturers of the instrument have long felt that artistic skill and mechanical ingenuity had vainly essayed to banish that woodiness of sound, and want of sustained vibration, that attended the emission of its tone. The Aeolian Attachment not only removes the evils that are inherent in the piano-forte, but imparts to it a distinctive vibratory and sustaining power, combining the rich volume and swell of the organ with the passionate intensity and pathetic tenderness elicited from an Amati, or a Straduarius, by a gifted violinist. ”

“ Several specimens have been discovered in tombs preserved in a more or less perfect condition.
The Egyptians possessed various kinds of harps, some of which were elegantly shaped and tastefully ornamented. The largest were about six and a half feet high; and the small ones frequently had some sort of stand which enabled the performer to play upon the instrument while standing. The name of the harp was buni. Its frame had no front pillar; the tension of the strings therefore cannot have been anything like so strong as on our present harp. ”

“ The Anglo-saxons frequently accompanied their vocal effusions with a harp, more or less triangular in shape,—an instrument which may be considered rather as constituting the transition of the lyre into the harp. The representation of king David playing the harp is from an Anglo-saxon manuscript of the beginning of the eleventh century, in the British museum. The harp was especially popular in central and northern Europe, and was the favourite instrument of the German and Celtic bards and of the Scandinavian skalds. ”

“ Cultured races and primitive peoples alike played the harp. The Greeks had three-cornered harps and the Romans had harps with a curved frame, pegs, and sound-box. The famous lyre was a kind of harp. The ancient Irish harp, called cruit, and also crwth, which in time became a sort of fiddle-harp and was played with a bow, seems to have been an ancestor of the violin. As early as 200 B.C. the Irish children were taught that “the spirit of song dwelt among the trembling strings of the cruit.” ”

“ While Mars doth take the Aonian harp to play?
Great are thy kingdoms, over-strong and large,
Ambitious imp, why seek'st thou further charge?
Are all things thine? the Muses' Tempe thine?
Then scarce can Phœbus say, "This harp is mine." ”

“ AEOLIS (AEOLIA) , an ancient district of Asia Minor, colonized at a very early date by Aeolian Greeks. The name was applied to the coast from the river Hermus to the promontory of Lecture, i.o. between Ionia to S. and Troas to N. The Aeolians founded twelve cities on the mainland, including Cyme, and numerous towns in Mytilene: they were said also to have settled in the Troad and even within the Hellespont.
AEOLUS, in Greek mythology, according to Homer the son of Hippotes, god and father of the winds, and ruler of the island of Aeolia. ”

“ Two harps of a peculiar shape were copied by Sir Gore Ousely from Persian manuscripts about four hundred years old, resembling, in the principle on which they are constructed, all other oriental harps. There existed evidently various kinds of the chang. It may be remarked here that the instrument tschenk (or chang) in use at the present day in Persia, is more like a dulcimer than a harp. The Arabs adopted the harp from the Persians, and called it junk.
The Persians appear to have adopted, at an early period, smaller musical intervals than semitones. ”

“ The forms of Harp drawn in this work (Plates II., III., and XXXIV.) differ from the ancient harps which had no forearm or front pillar, and could therefore have endured but little strain. Yet an old Celtic monument represents a harp-like instrument with this Eastern peculiarity. The extremely interesting Celtic harps here drawn, the Queen Mary and the Lamont harps, have forearms or bows of a constructive strength that would, with the rest of the framing, bear a considerable draught of wire. The Celts and Germanic nations appear to have long cultivated the harp. ”

“ The scale will thus begin on D, and the semitones (as in our modern minor scales) will fall in the same places as before, viz. between the second and third, and fifth and sixth notes of the scale.
In this position the Æolian mode is apt to be confounded with the Dorian, or first mode, with which, when thus transposed, it corresponds, except in the upper tetrachord, the semitone of which in the Dorian mode falls between the sixth and seventh notes of the scale. ”

“ The harp is a very ancient instrument. It was played thousands of years ago in Egypt and Assyria. In fact it was the favorite instrument of the Egyptians and it was often magnificently ornamented. The Egyptian harp had no front pillar, and sometimes it looks in the hands of the player like a boat with a sail of strings. ”

“ The harps were frequently the heighth of a man; they were painted tastefully with lotus and other flowers, and richly ornamented and inlaid. The tuning was by means of pegs, sometimes two rows of pegs are shewn. There were long slit holes at the back for giving freedom to the air, exactly as found in modern harps.
No instance has been found of harp with supporting pole or pillar. The strings were always of gut. One harp has been discovered with strings which though they had been buried more than 3000 years still sounded on being touched. ”

“ These effects are of the same nature as those produced by the harp of Orpheus, and it is to be observed that in the ballad of 'Harpans Kraft' the harper is a bridegroom seeking (successfully) to recover his bride, who has been carried down to the depths of the water by a merman. We have had something like these effects in the 'Twa Brothers,' No 49, B 10, I, 439, where Lady Margaret harps the small birds off the briers and her true love out of the grave. [97] There is a fisherman in the Gesta Romanorum who has a harp so sweet that all the fish in the water come to his hand: Oesterley, No 85, p. ”

“ Such scepticism is especially to be expected on the part of the many enthusiastic students of petrography who are accustomed to regard rocks merely as mineral aggregates, and even to have their slices prepared in a manner which scarcely permits organic remains of present to be distinguished. Such students should consider that the discovery of Eozoon brings the rocks of the Laurentian system into more full harmony with the other geological formations. ”

“ It was not in the parts only on the other side of the isthmus, that the Æolian nation was powerful, but those on this side also were formerly Æolians. They were afterwards intermixed first with Ionians who came from Attica, and got possession of Ægialus,10 and secondly with Dorians, who under the conduct of the Heracleidæ founded Megara and many of the cities in the Peloponnesus. The Iones were soon expelled by the Achæi, an Æolian tribe; and there remained in Peloponnesus the two nations, the Æolic and the Doric. ”

“ The fact that some eoliths were found in geological formations much older than man—so far as we know his history—was an argument against all of them, because the older and the more recent looked so much alike. Another cogent objection was that eoliths could have been made by natural forces, such as a landslide, the pressure of heavy strata, or one stone knocking against another. A heavy cart can make an eolith when it rolls over a smooth flint. ”

“ Subsequently the Colophonians drove out the Aeolians from Smyrna, which from henceforth was a purely Ionic city. The Aeolians were originally in possession of the traditions of the Trojan war, which their ancestors had waged, and in which no Ionians had taken part. (Müller, Aeginet. p. 25, Orchom. p. 367.) Homer therefore, himself an Ionian, who had come from Ephesus, received these traditions from the new Aeolian settlers, and when the Ionians were driven out of Smyrna, either he himself fled to Chios, or his descendants or disciples settled there, and formed the famous family of Homerids. ”

“ No interest can attach to such low forms of life as the Eolids unless they teach something of the methods of Nature in originating species. Readers of The Popular Science Monthly will not give their attention to mere description or anecdote. Facts they know do not pass into science until fertilized by ideas. We shall return to Eolis and its family through a study of forms which the eye, not aided by the knife, would report as far removed from them.
A mollusk is a soft, fleshy, sac-like body, with a mantle (pallium) extending from the back in two folds, right and left, around the sides. ”

“ The notation of harp parts is the same as that of the piano. Although the harp is hardly a regular member of the orchestral family, one or more harps are frequently called for in modern scores. Their brilliant, scintillating effect is too well known to require description. Harmonics are possible and are of ethereal beauty in soft passages. ”

“ Although, therefore, the layers which contain well characterised Eozoon are few and far between, there is reason to believe that in the composition of the limestones of the Laurentian it bore no small part, and as these limestones are some of them several hundred feet in thickness, and extend over vast areas, Eozoon may be supposed to have been as efficient a world-builder as the Stromatoporæ of the Silurian and Devonian, the Globigerinæ and their allies in the chalk, or the Nummulites and Miliolites in the Eocene. ”

“ But, like other places, it is not on the site of its prototype. For Æolus gives Ulysses a Zephyr or north-west wind, which would have carried him home, had it not been for the folly of his comrades (Od. x. 25, 46) . The Æolia of Homer then must conform to these two conditions:
1. It must lie north-west of Ithaca.
2. There must be a continuous open sea between them; and one uninterrupted by land, so that one and the same wind may carry a ship all the way.
To meet these conditions, we have only to move Æolia northward. For the northern part of Italy has no existence in the Outer Geography. ”

“ Further, the accurate appreciation of the evidence for such a fossil as Eozoon required an amount of knowledge of minerals, of the more humble types of animals, and of the conditions of mineralization of organic remains, possessed by few even of professional geologists. Thus Eozoon has met with some negative scepticism and positive opposition—though the latter has been smaller in amount than might have been anticipated, when we consider the novel and startling character of the facts adduced. ”

“ They, chafing at restraint, surge against their barriers with the great rumbling of a mountain. Æolus sits in a lofty stronghold, holding a scepter, and soothes their feeling and softens their wrath. If he did not do this, they would surely carry with them in rapid course the seas and lands and the deep sky and sweep these with them to the high heavens. ”

“ In the same stone the claws of crabs, fragments of echini, and other signs of a neighbouring beach are observed. [263-B]
Great Oolite.—Although the name of coral-rag has been appropriated, as we have seen, to a member of the Upper Oolite before described, some portions of the Lower Oolite are equally intitled in many places to be called coralline limestones. Thus the Great Oolite near Bath contains various corals, among which the Eunomia radiata [p.264] (fig. 280.) is very conspicuous, single individuals forming masses several feet in diameter ”

“ Its massive skeletons, composed of innumerable cells, would seem to have extended themselves over submarine rocks, their base upwards of twelve inches in width and their thickness from four to six inches. Such is the antiquity of the Eozoon that the distance of time which separated it from the Trilobites of the Cambrian formation may be equal to the vast period which elapsed between these and the Tertiary ages. In other words, it is beyond our imagination to conceive. ”