never prepares, and often disturbs our sympathy. Grief does not more powerful|ly engage and attract us to the person in whom we observe it, than these, while we are ignorant of their cause, disgust and de|tach us from him. It was, it seems, the intention of nature, that those rougher and more unamiable emotions, which drive men from one another, should be less ea|sily and more rarely communicated.
When music imitates the modulations of grief or joy, it either actually inspires us with those passions, or at least puts us in the mood which disposes us to conceive them. But when it imitates the notes of anger, it inspires us with fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, devotion, are all of them passions which are naturally musical. Their natural tones are all soft, clear, and melo|dious; and they naturally express them|selves in periods which are distinguished by regular pauses, and which upon that ac|count are easily adapted to the regular re|turns of the correspondent airs of a tune. The voice of anger, on the contrary, and of all the passions which are akin to it, is harsh and discordant. Its periods too are all irregular, sometimes very long, and
