I saw in Algiers many things that interested me, very much _du point de vue moeurs fêtes_, with strange music on queer instruments, odd dances, odder singing. The music of the Moors is altogether very strange; it is monotonous in the extreme, fitful, and sometimes apparently without any kind of shape, and yet there is something very characteristic and almost attaching about it. This applies only to instrumental music, for as for the voice, they seem to consider it only as a shriller instrument, using always at full pitch, with neck outstretched and eyes half shut, always from the throat and always higher than they can go. It is very strange that a nation which attained once so high a pitch of civilisation, should either never have known or have entirely forgotten that the human voice is capable of inflection, and what an all-powerful vehicle it may be made of every passionate sentiment or soothing influence. However, much the same thing is noticeable in the peasants near Rome, whose songs consist (within a definite shape) of long-sustained chest notes that are peculiar in the extreme, and though often harsh seem to be wonderfully in harmony with the long unbroken lines of the Campagna.
_À propos_ of chanting, I saw a very striking thing one day in Algiers, in the shape of a Rhapsodist, who recited, with an uncouth instrumental accompaniment, a long string of strophes describing (I am told) the life and deeds of some hero; it was exactly what a recital of the Homeric poems must have been amongst the early Greeks. The Homer stood up in the midst of a motley and most picturesque group of breathless listeners, and chanted, with a sort of animated monotony, verses of about two lines each, heightening the colour of his tale by gesticulations. After each strophe the music struck in, consisting of two queerly shaped tambours and a shrill flute. After the performance, or rather, during the pauses, money was collected in the tambourines. Homer (if he ever lived) no doubt did the same.
On his return to Paris Leighton wrote to Steinle:--
_Translation._] PARIS, _October 22, 1857_.
MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--Since I know your industry better than any one else, and also know that at this moment you are quite particularly busy, I cannot be surprised that you have not answered my letter of last month; however, some warm expressions slipped from me in that letter which you may perhaps have taken amiss; lest this should be indeed the case, I hasten, my dear Master, to make you an ample apology and to beg you not to take amiss what I may have said too hastily; but if it is not so, do send me a short note that my doubt may be solved; for it is an excessively painful idea to me that a single word from my mouth should have displeased you.
