tant a social event in our national annals as the games of Greece were in even the most flourishing period of her artistic civilization, yet there is no doubt that it would be difficult to overestimate the effect it may have in elevating and improving our physical culture, and that it would do much to correct the too low standard of success in life which is inevitable from an exaggerated devotion to merely material aims.

Though heretofore it has been generally considered by the public that the bicycle was rather a toy for the entertainment of the exceptionally eccentric few, yet gradually the extension of its use has shown that it is most admirably adapted also for business purposes. The village doctor, for example, has already, in numerous cases, found it to be the safest, easiest, and most convenient means for visiting his daily round of patients. stands always ready, and, furnished with a saddle-bag, he can promptly arrive wherever he may be called, amply provided with all the appliances he needs for an emergency. In England it is largely used by clergymen for making their rounds of pastoral visits; while the numerous class of commercial travellers have found it a most useful appliance in the dispatch of their business.

in the practice of bicycling will be as powerful in effecting the improvement of the roads all over the country, strengthening the public opinion that they are designed more for the convenience and the pleasure of human beings than for horses, as the Central Park itself has been in stimulating the public appreciation of pleasuregrounds and rational open-air recreation throughout all the chief cities of the country.

The wheelman being generally a man of enterprise, as he shows by the fact of becoming a bicycler, he is not a person to whom routine forms an impassable barrier; and therefore the bicyclers collectively form inevitably a body of persons to whom the public can legitimately look with confidence, for the future, as men ready to examine the claims for consideration of the new, while not contemptuIt ously disregarding the old; that is, a class who, infused with the best spirit of the times, can naturally be counted upon to make themselves felt as a power in the future, to be counted upon the side of the right in the work before us for the further development of the possibilities of life. Possibly in the next century, in more senses than one, the historian may indicate by the term, the bicycle era, the times we are now living in, as we, in our retrospect, speak of the stone age, or of the era of steam.

There are already over one hundred clubs who have joined the League, and organized as their members are, dressed in uniform, and regularly drilled to perform their evolutions at the sound of the bugle

"THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES."

when out on parade, or engaged in mak-"THE music of the spheres" is a welling a tour along some winding country road, the attractive spectacle they present may be estimated by the individual attention they excite.

When the Central Park was first laid out, the plan of providing for equestrians their own system of roads, devoted only to their use, was considered a questionable innovation. No one would, however, to-day question the unmixed benefit which its introduction has been to every one, or the stimulus it has given to the practice of horseback-riding in New York. It may, perhaps, be premature to suggest that the furnishing of similar accommodations to the bicyclers would be only a continuance of the spirit of consideration for the public which the administration of the Park has generally displayed.

The influence of an increasing interest

known phrase, derived by the Greeks from the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and since the Renaissance has been in constant use, although its signification is extremely vague.

The mathematical musician Pythagoras maintained that the sun was the true centre around which the earth and the other planets revolved; but this belief, being at that period far in advance of the opinions of the ancient Greek astronomers, found very few supporters. This great philosopher and his musical followers, called Canonici, labored to establish the art of music on a scientific basis; while the æsthetic musicians, with Aristotle at their head, persistently held that the ear, and not the ratio of vibrations or the harmonic canon, should be made the sole judge of right or wrong in music.

The point to be noted here is that the

sical parts which are technically termed intervals, and their speeds are similar to the musically regulated rhythmic motions. By the due observance of such laws the stability of the whole is preserved as in a kind of moving equilibrium. With respect to ordinary lyric music, consisting of a melody with a simple accompaniment of chords, the comparison is not so close. For here the bass and chords merely form a sort of base and pedestal, on which the melody or theme may be more attractively displayed, and as a figure that is to be the sole or principal object of attention. Such music more resembles terrestrial architecture, resting on a stable foundation, or, as we commonly say and imagine, terra firma, forgetting habitually the wild balloon, careering in space, on which we build so confidently.

practical musicians were compelled to ac- | And, further, they are similarly guarded knowledge the truth of the Pythagorean from interfering with and from exercislaws, and to accept the analogy he made ing undue influence over one another. between the solar system and the tonal For the planets obey laws of time and system. They perceived the dependence place; their distances are precisely anof the tones of the musical scale upon one | alogous to the distances between the muprincipal tone (which we ourselves now fully recognize, and call the key-note), and regarded this dependence as similar to that of the planets upon the sun. For Aristotle says: "When, after having tuned all the strings of the lyre, one changes the middle string" (which was the key-note), "and then uses the instrument, why do they all sound wrongly tuned, not only when one strikes that middle tone, but all through the melody; while if, instead of this string, one changes any other, the difference is noticed when that string, and that string only, is used, the whole of the melody not being put out of tune? Does not this take place with good reason, for the best melodies use the middle string very often, and no other tone in equal de- | gree?" He then compares the middle tone with conjunctions in grammar, or binding-words, suggesting that the middle string binds together the sense and effect of the whole melody. In another passage he partly answers the question by saying: "Is it because good tune is enjoined for all the strings-for all a certain relation to the middle tone-and by this middle tone the place of all is determined?" And again: "When this foundation of right tuning is taken away, no proper order is perceived."

It is singular that this æsthetic philosopher should thus describe so well the tonic or key-note, making it an axis from which all the other notes are calculated, and that the mathematician should compare this note (on the middle string, or Mese) with the sun, and the others to the planets.

Analogies equally interesting may be found in our modern music, although this, when compared with that of the Greeks, is a new art. For take a chorus in four or eight real parts, similar to those in Handel's oratorios or Bach's motets. Here, instead of one melody, several melodies are heard simultaneously. They all move freely. Even the bass part is not an immovable foundation supporting a superstructure, but is itself equally active in progression. In this respect the melodies have their appointed courses as the planets have their respective orbits.

Contrapuntal music, therefore, more closely resembles celestial architecture, in which all would become chaotic unless the required distances (intervals) and speeds (time) were observed, and in which all the motions are apparently free and independent, and yet they are really subject to most rigid laws. The various parts mutually act and react upon each other, so that their combination forms one complex, organic, or complete whole, from which nothing can be taken and to which nothing can be added without endangering the stability of the whole.

No such change could be satisfactorily made except by one competent to project a similar work. That is to say, no musician could add or remove a part from a fugue or canon without injuring the music, unless he were so skilled a contrapuntist as to be able to construct a fugue or canon with an equal number of parts, and in conformity with the strict laws observed in such productions.

Having considered planetary motions as analogous to united melodies, it will be found interesting to point to a certain similitude existing between the relative distances of the planets and those of musical tones in a chord.

Vocal quartettes are usually based upon the four principal divisions of human

voices, those of women forming one cou- | veniently the planetary distances with the intervals of a vocal quartette, take the lowest note on the viola (or octave above the lowest note of the 'cello, or the note corre

ple (soprano, contralto), and those of men another pair (tenor, bass), which differ not only in characteristics, but in pitch. They naturally move at a certain dis-sponding with an organ pipe four feet in tance from each other in the tonal region, and therefore the notes that are sung to form a chord are very rarely so close together that they may be played with one hand upon a piano-forte. They are more widely extended. The soprano moves freely upward, and bass descends to a certain depth, that the two inner parts may have so free and open a space that their melodic motions may not be impeded, cramped, or confined. Therefore they make "dispersed harmony," which is more beautiful than "close harmony," even in instrumental music.

Take now the great chord of Nature, which is the basis of modern harmony, and display it dispersedly as above, and the resulting intervals will be found to correspond with the relative distances of the several planets.

According to Bode's law, an approximate empirical expression of the distances of the planets from the sun is as fol

lows:

Mercury.

4

7 10 16

24

Uranus.

4

48 96 192

Neptune.

384

28 52 100 196 388

where each distance is the sum of 4 and a multiple of 3 by successive powers of 2, as shown in line 3.

length), or "C," then above this the nearest "B flat," above this again the nearest "E," and then above this the nearest "C," and four sounds will be obtained, whose vibrations (at scientific pitch) are respectively 128, 224, 320, 512, and therefore in the same ratio as the first four planets with regard to distance from each other. For they stand, or rather continue to move, in the ratio of 4: 7: 10: 16. This same beautiful chord may be raised on any given note, and thus the actual speed of the vibrations will be altered, although their relative proportions will remain unchanged.

The asteroids, marked 28, agree with a "B flat," two octaves higher than the one mentioned above.

Jupiter, marked 52, corresponds with a "G sharp" in altissimo.

Saturn, known to be really about 95, adds a higher “G natural.”

Uranus, 192, represents a "G natural" one octave higher still; and Neptune, known to be about 300, completes the series with a still higher "D."

The additional sounds thus gained (with the exception of the "G sharp") are those that musicians commonly employ in this combination, although they are frequently omitted.

their algebraical notation by the letters C, E, G, B flat, D.

To be in exact correspondence with music (when this is rendered with mathematical or ideal purity of intonation), the numbers should be 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 48, 96, 192, 288. For these may be divided reThese distances are not exactly correct, peatedly by 2 until they form the series but only nearly so. They vary continu- 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, which is the arithmetical exously. The earth, for instance, is nearer pression of this chord, the "chord of the the sun in winter than in summer. Sim-major ninth," which musicians express in ilarly in music the intervals are not always rendered with exactness, but are varied somewhat in obedience to certain This chord is produced when any sinoccult influences, or are designedly alter- gle sound is analyzed, and is analogous to ed. It may be noted in passing that, as the series of colors seen in the rainbow, or for practical purposes of life, we do not whenever a ray of white light is similarly use solar, or sidereal, or apparent time, analyzed. It is equally a natural prodbut a mean time, so, also, for the practi-uct. This fact is stated here that it may cal purposes of music, we similarly employ, as in the tuning of piano-fortes, a mean temperament, or 'equal temperament," analogous to the "equation of time."

66

not be thought that this chord was chosen from many employed by musicians because its proportions suited the purpose in view. It is the normal combination from which all other harmonies are formed by

To proceed. In order to compare con- | modification.

A LAODICEAN.

BOOK THE THIRD.-DE STANCY.

where he was to be seen bending attentively over it, arranging the lights and di

AVILL overheard the words, and hast-recting Dare with the instruments. On