For all the world stops at Freiburg to hear and enjoy
the great organ,--all except the self-satisfied English clergyman,
who says he does n't care much for it, and would rather go about town
and see the old walls; and the young and boorish French couple, whose
refined amusement in the railway-carriage consisted in the young
man's catching his wife's foot in the window-strap, and hauling it up
to the level of the window, and who cross themselves and go out after
the first tune; and the two bread-and-butter English young ladies,
one of whom asks the other in the midst of the performance, if she
has thought yet to count the pipes,--a thoughtful verification of
Murray, which is very commendable in a young woman traveling for the
improvement of her little mind.
One has heard so much of this organ, that he expects impossibilities,
and is at first almost disappointed, although it is not long in
discovering its vast compass, and its wonderful imitations, now of a
full orchestra, and again of a single instrument. One has not to
wait long before he is mastered by its spell. The vox humana stop
did not strike me as so perfect as that of the organ in the Rev.
Mr. Hale's church in Boston, though the imitation of choir-voices
responding to the organ was very effective. But it is not in tricks
of imitation that this organ is so wonderful: it is its power of
revealing, by all its compass, the inmost part of any musical
composition.
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