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.
Notes
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.