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Extracts from Dr. Gauntlett's Letters1

APPENDIX.

EXTRACTS FROM DR. GAUNTLETT'S LETTERS ADDRESSED TO F. J. HUGHES.


AFTER I had sent this work to the publisher, I looked over letters addressed to me by the late Dr. Gauntlett. They show so much interest in the scheme, that I publish extracts from them.

1867.—"Your plan of eliciting facts from Scripture (altogether new) interests me exceedingly." "To make out the scheme of harmonical parallel proper for the elucidation of your system, it will, if possible, run all true with the harmony of colour, and this has never yet been done, except in a way which has been met with serious objections. When I commenced the examination of your theory, I spent five days at the British Museum, and collated about forty volumes." "I am very glad to hear you have a probability of harmonising numbers by the same laws as light and sound." "What you call rest, I call the appearance and disappearance of a harmonical cycle." "Your series of fifths is quite correct."

1871.—"There has been much written lately respecting colour and tone, but nothing bearing on your own view." "The new theories in music seem inclined to go back to the ancient faith of Pythagoras, everything being used up with the modern notions of tonality. Perhaps we may find a great change at hand; the present system, limiting, as it does, that which is illimitable, cannot be right."

1872.—"It gives me great pleasure to write to you on this subject. Music deals more with the imaginative faculty than any other art or science, and possessing, as it does, the power of affecting life, and making great multitudes feel as one, may have more than ordinary sympathy with the laws you work upon. You say 'from E, root of B, the fountain key-note F, root of C, rises.' There is a singular analogy here in the relativities of sounds, as traced by comparing the numbers made together by vibrations of strings with the length of strings themselves, the one is the inverse or the counterchange of the other. The length of B and E are the counterchange of F and C, hence they are twin sounds in harmony."

1873.—"It seems to me, from so many curious coincidences, that truth lies within, the system." "I by no means resign the possibility of being able to satisfy myself." "There is no insuperable objection that I can see." "Your theory of the illimitable nature of tones, the limits of six as a one complete and perfect view, and the simplicity of the three pairs, dwell much on my mind. I believe it to be quite new, and in one way or the other quite true."

1874.—"I have been intending to write to you with a full scheme, your scheme so differs from any put forth in these modern days. Like all theories—for there is no exception—my plan does not come up to clear demonstration. It is like the colour theory. No doubt simplicity

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