NOISE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 83, 10 April 1871, Page 3

NOISE.

{From the Saturday Review.) The literature of our day is marked by a unanimous revolt against noise. Noise is denounced as an evil thing. Noise is /Weed the arch enemy of the overwrought feMi'm, and most influential brains of our JTday are overwrought. It is one of the A effects of culture to subdue social noise and all clamorous expression, Politeness is soon distracted, aud whispers a shuddering hush, at sounds which would have passed unheeded by our robuster ancestors. People are gradually stopping their ears against all excited utterances. Shakspeare^ in Lis day recognised a spirit-stirring quality in the ear-piercing fife, ;and the old poets meant a compliment by the epithet shrill ; but what pierces the ear offends at once sense and taste now, and shrillness is maddening to our sensitive organisation. Even within the century a great change has come over men's endurance of sound. Sympathies have turned into antipathies. Walter Scott enjoyed the frenzied rivalry of contending bagpipes. It acted on him as an inspiration. Little would he have heeded the barrel-organ, the despair and death of modern genius ; h© / would have married it to immortal verge. No oue can read his description of the banquet in Branksome Hall without perceiving how willingly he would have taken part in the festivity and raised his voice to the height of the occasion. His verse is out of fashion now ; we need not apologize for quoting how, after the priest had pronounced his benison on ptarmigan and venison, Then rose the riot and the din Above, beneath, without, within ; For from the lofty balcony Rung trumpet, shawm, and psaltery ; Their clanging howls old warriors quaff d, Loudly they spoke and loudly laugh'd The hooded hawks, high perch'd on beam, The clamour join'd with whistling scream, And fiapp'd their wings and shook their bells, In concert with the stag-hounds' yells. It is this clatter of sound, this mingling of discords once insepai'able from the very idea of revelry, which is so dreadful to modern nerves. A certain music was then evolved out of it which spoke to heart and brain ; but our refinement recoils from the savage charm. What once quickened fellosvship now drives to , misanthropy, seeking relief in the silent, solitary/ vituperation of the pen. I And yet noise is a potent educator, as we cannot but observe where existence passes without it. And by noise we mean ''"noise proper, not harmonised' melodious I noise, but clang, clatter, rumble, hurley■urley, and confusion. In the first place noise quickens the imagination, and drives the hearers into comparisons. It is impossible to describe a sound but by likening it to something else. And his loud guns speak thick like angry men. But without going to the infinite variety of grand, familiar, fantastic illustrations by which the poets bring sound home to our intelligence, we know that the ignorant and illiterate are driven to their , similes, and hear two things instead of one, when once they would convey an idea of sound. A boy bellows like . a bull, a trampling overhead is the house coming down, and a crack-voiced orator is a thousand penny-trumpets, a fusillade is like hand-clapping, a gang of tprbulent navvies four hundred roaring lions. And.' with this stimulant to poetry and ex/ pressionthenoisemust.be of the chaotic, unintelligible type, startling, surprising, hiding its cause in a mystery, suggestive, not explaining itself. ; Tt is this that constitutes the excitement of a crowd in full speech, or cry, or tramp. It is a complex thing, its noise has a thousand meanings and interpretations. Hence noise of men's making is more telling. 6n r most spirits, and a more effective, sharpener of the ordinary intellect, than the sounds— grander / but less intricate — '• of nature's more ■' harmonious gamut, . though .'* the one illustrates the other as J ( the.double^double, • double beat of . the . : thunclering drum," "the thunder of. the! captains/ .and .the shouting." - .-:.r\.K>; ,:.-<v^ ;, -,'- /

In the matter of noise, it is easy to have too much of a good thing, and the dwellers in noiseful towns and courts, the frequenters b| crowded, -'rumbling, grinding thoroughfai'es,- with nerves on the tenterhook, worn spirits, and faulty digestions, are so circumstanced. Noise is to them such a. positive evil that they believe it a universal one ; or, at least, that as the tyranny. of privation is milder than that of infliction, they are justified in silencing the joys of ruder men. But there are conditions of life and ,, haunts of men where silence is so prevailing, where the ear is so rarely filled to satiety, that those who note it become alive tr> a want, to an appetite unsatisfied., The system which is never exposed ito an excess of sound/ misses a stimulus a certain accord of brain, heart, and lungs necessary to a full sense oflife,and without which the soul never Eor remainder of news see fourth page.

arrives at its full capacity, either for feeling or sympathy. Such existence is sluggish. In many orderly villages where authority holds a tight hand over its dependents, noise is disreputable, because there is no provision made for respectable noise in any healthful quantity. There are no games, no recognised gatherings where shouts can pierce and echo and reverberate ; no village band, no bells, no bellringers, no crashing organ, no choir of the old manly braying sort. Even the jovial cries of harvest home are discountenanced as beery, and the harvest supper is commuted into so much beef and pudding to be eaten quietly and decorously at home. Tumult, even in the shape of fun after a hard day's work, soon catches an illicit ring to ears steeped in silence, and is snubbed as threatening to morals. Within doors, the effervescence of earger, high-toned chatter is unknown, for ploughmen never converse, and the silent rustic sinks into his chimney corner debarred by the dog-tax from the oucecherrished luxury of a yelping cur ; his only chance now of a stunuing body of sound reduced to crying children and the perpetual dropping of an angry housewife. Rustic genius is seldom steady, the craving for sound so essential to its development too often leading it to turbulent scenes. Wherever noise was loudest, there was Buuyan the scapegrace. Hence he entertaius his pilgrims with shoutings and trumpets as a foretaste of heaven. "Can heaven be happier than sitting in the public with a jug of ale and the fiddle going ? " asked a young collier of his mate Bill — an inquiry which implies conscious expansion . of the faculties under the harsh, but stirring, spell of gruff voices and scraping catgut. It may be noted that the best unlettered hymn-writer of our language was a blacksmith, the beat and clang of the anvil doubtless affording an outlet to imprisoned poesy which might never otherwise have found a vent. The idea of religiou in the unlearned mass who pass their lives in silent, solitary occupations is so inseparably associated with noise that ifc is almost hopeless to instil the one without some aid from the other. The preacher must fill their ears if he would get at their feelings and understandings ; they must sing, and the singing must rise into hallooing, before emotion can be stirred, or the sense of it find its way to heart and veins. To the dwellers in rural solitudes we may imagine the charm and intellectual fillip of market-day, The confusion of sound brings a new sense of life and brotherhood ; the crack and crash, the rattle and grinding of wheels, the roul- j titudinous cries, the snatches of talk and laughter, the tread of numbers, and, over all, clocks and chimes and bells, each sound demanding, insinuating, clamouring to bo heard and diverting the thought for the moment to itself, and yet all harmoniziug into a busy-bee-like unity of purpose, Where all is hum and buz from morn till night. Our markets have a national influence quite beyond what eye can count or statistics reckon. Artizans have perhaps too much noise ; not that we hear them complain of it. We believe that a silent factory, with no rush of steam, no rattle of machinery, no hum of revolving wheels, would be oppressive. Noise is as powerful a sedative as it is a stimulant ; no monotonous work is long endurable without it. But it is an affectation to rest the plea for noise on its use and appreciation by the lower orders. All people, even the most flinching, sensitive, and querulous, like to have their ears filled with sound, if it is the sort that pleases them. Spirits always mean noise. Mirth is outspoken, so are hope and expectation and vitality of every sort. Miss Austen remarks that " everybody has their taste in noises as in other matters, and sounds are quite innoxious or most distressing by their sort rather than their quantity." The good lady who shrank from the domestic hurricane at Upper-cross, and resolved never to call there again in the Christmas holidays when the boys were at home and everybody spoke at the pitch of their voices and nobody was heard — a hubbub characterised by the delighted grandmamma as " a quiet little cheerfulness "< — made no complaint when she drove into Bath a few days later amid the dash of carriages, the heavy rumble of carts and drags, the bawling of newsmen, muffinanen, milk-men, and the ceaseless clink of pattens. These were noises belonging to her winter pleasures, and her spirits rose under their influence. Owing to their greater vivacity of temperament, most European society is more noisy and carries x>n conversation at a higher pitch than we do. " Who can keep their good humor at an English visit ? " cries the Frenchified lady in ihe comedy; " they sit as at a funeral, silent, in the midst of many *candlesj" and though we have found our tongue since then, it may be due to the indispensable music which, acting in the vulgar capacity of mere noise, succeeds in raising our pitch to that of more ex-

citable nations-. We have heard that in the East to talk your loudest is a point of ceremony and good manners. "Vflho can tell but that this, and there mourning, is the necessary reaction from monotony of scenery and life ? Their discordant instruments may have the same meaning. * It is a misfortune to be abnormally sensiitve to noise, and ofteu affects the character unfavorably, making it cynical and unsocial. It is one of the points on which men will think themselves standards, and decline to believe that noise-lovers can have anything to say for themselves. To aver, for instance, that you find proud, exulting excitement when " the many rend the skies" round the hustings, or in the tunings of a prodigious orchestra, or the swing and sway of a peal of bells overhead, or even in the full chorus of a meeting of choirs, when each village contingent resolves to make itself heard above the din of voice and organ or die for it, is to incur not only contempt for your taste, but disbelief ; it is not ihe enjoyment you describe, but some malignant triumph over more exquisite organization — a sheer love of torture. Nature's noises are less repugnant to this form of refinement. Men may like a thunderclap, or the roar of Chisel Beach, ot the wind on a hill top, or a torrent tumbling from a height, without shocking anybody's susceptibility ; though all • noises, if they are but loud enough, have much in common. The most trying of all noises, the near contact of loud, harsh, saw-grinding voices, offends us nor. only through the ear ; it wounds our selfrespect and sense of propriety. If the speakers were really cockatoos we could stand them better. In some houses noise is such an offence that childreu grow up altogether missing a tonic. It is of course indispensable that they should learn to be silent in fit time and place ; but some shrinking natures so dread reproof and expostulation ihat an undue snubbing in this particular stills them for life and induces a morbid temperament. We miss a flash in the eye, a spring in the step, a ring in the laugh, which a little noise indulged in at odd times might have instilled into the system. Children need freedom of voice to gain freedom of thought. These victims of silence grow up creepy. They are of those " Che non traggon la voce viva a' denti," and want courage to assert themselves. And it is this consideration, the conviction that noise is one of nature's invigorators, that prompts us to defend it against its legion of enemies. Making a noise in the world is no figure of speech. Let two men be equally gifted iv all respects but voice, and give one a powerful organ and the other a weak one, and the man of physical power will be miles a-head. He, indeed, can always take care of himself. But it is lawful, recognised noise for the million who live remote from the turmoil of cities, which we plead for as one of the important elements of healthful life along with fresh air and pure water.