Julius Also Adds, That The Britons,
Previous To An Engagement, Anointed Their Faces With A Nitrous
Ointment, Which Gave Them So Ghastly And Shining An Appearance,
That The Enemy Could Scarcely Bear To Look At Them, Particularly If
The Rays Of The Sun Were Reflected On Them.
CHAPTER XII
Of their quickness and sharpness of understanding
These people being of a sharp and acute intellect, and gifted with
a rich and powerful understanding, excel in whatever studies they
pursue, and are more quick and cunning than the other inhabitants
of a western clime.
Their musical instruments charm and delight the ear with their
sweetness, are borne along by such celerity and delicacy of
modulation, producing such a consonance from the rapidity of
seemingly discordant touches, that I shall briefly repeat what is
set forth in our Irish Topography on the subject of the musical
instruments of the three nations. It is astonishing that in so
complex and rapid a movement of the fingers, the musical
proportions can be preserved, and that throughout the difficult
modulations on their various instruments, the harmony is completed
with such a sweet velocity, so unequal an equality, so discordant a
concord, as if the chords sounded together fourths or fifths. They
always begin from B flat, and return to the same, that the whole
may be completed under the sweetness of a pleasing sound. They
enter into a movement, and conclude it in so delicate a manner, and
play the little notes so sportively under the blunter sounds of the
base strings, enlivening with wanton levity, or communicating a
deeper internal sensation of pleasure, so that the perfection of
their art appears in the concealment of it:
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