derived from the Latin imitare, to "represent or repeat;" a sound or action, either exactly or nearly in the same manner as they were originally exhibited.

in Music, admits of two different senses. Sound and motion are either capable of imitating themselves by a repetition of their own particular modes, or of imitating other objects of a nobler and more abstracted imitation, stracted nature. Nothing perhaps is so purely mental, nothing so remote from external sense, as not to be imitable by music. But as the description of this in M. Rousseau, article Imitation, is nobly animated, and comprehends all that is necessary to be said on the subject, we translate it as follows.

"Dramatic or theatrical music (says he) contributes to imitation no less than painting or poetry: it is in this common principle that we must investigate both the origin and the final cause of all the fine arts; as M. le Batteaux has shown.* But this imitation is not equally extensive in all the imitative arts. Whatever the imagination can represent to itself is in the department of poetry. Painting, which does not present its pictures to the imagination immediately, but to external sense, and to one sense alone, paints only such objects as are discoverable by sight. Music might appear subjected to the same limits with respect to the ear; yet it is capable of painting every thing, even such images as are objects of ocular perception alone: by a magic almost inconceivable, it seems to transform the ears into eyes, and endow them with the double function of perceiving visible objects by the mediums of their own; and it is the greatest miracle of an art, which can only act by motion, that it can make that very motion represent absolute quiescence. Night, sleep, silence, solitude, are the noble efforts, the grand images, represented by a picturesque music. We know that noise can produce the same effect with silence, and silence the same effect with noise; as when one sleeps at a lecture insipidly and monotonously delivered, but wakes the instant when it ends. But music acts more intimately upon our spirits, in exciting by one sense dispositions similar to those which we find excited by another; and, as the relation between these images cannot be sensible unless the impression be strong, painting, when divested of this energy, cannot restore to music that assistance in imitations which she borrows from it. Though all nature should be asleep, he who contemplates her does not sleep; and the art of the musician consists in substituting, for this image of insensibility in the object, those emotions which its presence excites in the heart of the contemplator. He not only ferments and agitates the ocean, animates the flame to conflagration, makes the fountain murmur in his harmony, calls the rattling shower from heaven, and swells the torrent to resistless rage; but he paints the horrors of a boundless and frightful desert, involves the subterranean dungeon in tenfold gloom, soothes the tempest, tranquillizes the disturbed elements, and from the orchestra diffuses a recent fragrance through imaginary groves; nay, he excites in the soul the same emotions which we feel from the immediate perception and full influence of these objects."

Under the word Harmony, Rousseau has said, that no assistance can be drawn from thence, no original principle which leads to musical imitation; since there cannot be any relation between chords and the objects which the composer would paint, or the passions which he would express. In the article Melody, he imagines he has discovered that principle of imitation which harmony cannot yield, and what resources of nature are employed by music in representing these objects and these passions.

It is hoped, however, that in our article of Melody, we have shown upon what principle musical imitation may be compatible with harmony; though we admit, that from melody it derives its most powerful energy, and its most attractive graces. Yet we must either be deceived beyond all possibility of cure, or we have felt the power of imitative harmony in a high degree. We are certain that the fury, the impetuosity, the rapid vicissitudes, of a battle, may be successfully and vividly represented in harmony. We have participated the exultation and triumph of a conquest, inspired by the sound of a full chorus. We have felt all the solemnity and grandeur of devotion from the slow movement, the deep chords, the swelling harmony, of a sentimental composition played upon the organ. Nor do we imagine harmony less capable of presenting the tender depression, the fluctuating and tremulous agitation, of grief. As this kind of imitation is the noblest effort of music, it is astonishing that it should have been overlooked by M. d'Alembert. He has indeed apologized, by informing us, that his treatise is merely elementary: but we are uncertain how far this apology ought to be regarded as sufficient, when it is at the same time considered, that he has given an account of imitation in its mechanical, or what Rousseau calls its technical, sense; which, however, to prevent ambiguity, we should rather choose to call mimesis or anaephatosis. To Rousseau's account of the word in this acceptation, we return.

"Imitation (says he) in its technical sense, is a reiteration of the same air, or of one which is similar, in several parts where it is repeated by one after the other, either in unison, or at the distance of a fourth, a fifth, a third, or any other interval whatever. The imitation may be happily enough pursued even though several notes should be changed; provided the same air may always be recognised, and that the composer does not deviate from the laws of proper modulation. Frequently, in order to render the imitation more sensible, it is preceded by a general rest, or by long notes which seem to obliterate the impression formerly made by the air till it is renewed with greater force and vivacity by the commencement of the imitation. The imitation may be treated as the composer chooses; it may be abandoned, resumed, or another begun, at pleasure; in a word, its rules are as much relaxed as those of the fugue are severe; for this reason, it is despised by the most eminent masters; and every imitation of this kind, too much affected, almost always betrays a novice in composition."

Oratory, is an endeavour to resemble a speaker or writer in those qualities with regard to which we propose them to ourselves as patterns. The first historians among the Romans, says Cicero, were very dry and jejune, till they began to imitate the Greeks, and then they became their rivals. It is well known how closely Virgil has imitated Homer in his Æneid, Hesiod in his Georgics, and Theocritus in his Eclogues. Terence copied after Menander; and Plautus after Epicharmos, as we learn from Horace, lib. ii. ep. ad August, who himself owes many of his beauties to the Greek lyric poets. Cicero appears, from many passages in his writings, to have imitated the Greek orators. Thus Quintilian says of him, that he has expressed the strength and sublimity of Demosthenes.