IV. JOANNA’S CARE 553

Battle of Leuthen¹ (Friedrich, vol. ii. p. 259), in which “five-and-twenty thousand victor voices joined”:

“Now thank God one and all,

With heart, with voice, with hands,

Who wonders great hath done

To us and to all lands;”-

and, on the counter side, the song of the Marseillaise on the march to Paris,² which began the conquests of the French Revolution, in turning the tide of its enemies. Compare these, I say, with the debased use of modern military bands at dinners and dances, which inaugurate such victory as we had at the Battle of Balaclava, and the modern no-Battle of the Baltic, when our entire war fleet, a vast job of ironmongers, retreated, under Sir C. Napier, from before the Russian fortress of Cronstadt.³

80. I preface with this question the repetition of what I have always taught,⁴ that the Voice is the eternal musical instrument of heaven and earth, from angels down to birds. Half way between them, my little Joanie sang me yesterday, 13th May, 1889, “Farewell, Manchester,”⁵ and “Golden Slumbers,” two pieces of consummate melody, which can only be expressed by the voice, and belonging to the group of like melodies which have been, not invented, but inspired, to all nations in the days of their loyalty to God, to their prince, and to themselves. That Manchester has since become the funnel of a volcano, which, not content with vomiting pestilence, gorges the whole rain of heaven,⁶ that falls over a district as distant as the ancient Scottish border, -is not indeed wholly Manchester’s fault, nor altogether Charles Stuart’s fault; the beginning of both faults is in the substitution of mercenary armies for the troops of nations

¹ [For another reference to this battle, see A Knight’s Faith, ch. xii. (Vol. XXXI. p. 479).]

² [Compare Fiction, Fair and Foul, § 48 (Vol. XXXIV. p. 316).]

³ [See Vol. XXXIV. p. 524, and other references there given.]

⁴ [See, for instance, Vol. XXXI. pp. 107-112.]

⁵ [See Vol. XXXIV. p. 429.]

⁶ [For other references to Thirlmere water-works, see Vol. XIII. p. 517 n., and Vol. XXIX. p. 162.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]