Music is a science which enlivens the mind, and arouses the inanimate from the most languid stupor. It not only cheers the heart of man, but amuses even the wild beasts of the field, While they are gamboling in sportive innocence enjoying the luxuries of nature, if music hails them, it gives double relish to their enjoyments.

Music has the power of charming, and in consolation. How sweet to revert¹ on absent friends, which imagination paints them to our view, which have long been buried in oblivion. It is not possessed in the same degree by all classes, some have no pleasure in the entertainment, while it animates others, leads the mind to various retrospective scenes, and gives a higher colour to almost every external object.

How important to trace the works of God, and music in some manner conforms our ideas to His all-glorious principles; we can meditate on things celestial, with as much pleasure and more so than on terrestrial objects; and the mind takes as much delight in reflecting on future scenes, as on the past.

Margarette B. Lerned

Adams Female Academy,²

Londonderry, August 14, 1824

1st sheet.

¹ The writer is using "revert" in the sense of returning or going back to a former person or place (WNCD).

² For a note on Adams Female Academy, and on Margarette Barker Lerned, see W1100.