Why need we talk of a fiery hell? If the will, which is the law of our
nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason,
no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel,
from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness--a horrid
thought!
October 5. 1830.
EAR AND TASTE FOR MUSIC DIFFERENT.----ENGLISH LITURGY.----BELGIAN
REVOLUTION.
In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
* * * * *
An ear for music is a very different thing from a taste for music. I have
no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my life; but I have the
intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad. Naldi, a good
fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that I did not seem much
interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed. I said,
it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could scarcely contain myself
when a thing of Beethoven's followed.
* * * * *
I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of the prayers in the
English liturgy, till I had attended some kirks in the country parts of
Scotland, I call these strings of school boys or girls which we meet near
London--walking advertisements.
* * * * *
The Brussels riot--I cannot bring myself to dignify it with a higher name
--is a wretched parody on the last French revolution. Were I King William,
I would banish the Belgians, as Coriolanus banishes the Romans in
Shakspeare.[1]
It is a wicked rebellion without one just cause.
[Footnote 1:
"You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with _your uncertainty!_"
Act iii. sc. 3.]
_October_ 8. 1830.