286 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE
Cambridge at a festival which I will not particularise further than to say it was partly solemn at first, and. broadened into good fellowship without any excess. Songs were sung, and J. Mitchell Kemble, the subject of Tennyson's early " Ode to J. M. K.," gave time to the chorus of one of the songs by raising his arm and moving his glass. By those most simple gestures, he drove us all into an enthusiasm, comparable with that to which negroes are occasionally driven by an accurately timed tom-tom. In one of Bulwer's novels, the performer in a barn exercises equal power over his audience by the movements of a stick.
The human senses, when rythmically stimulated in certain exact cadences, are capable of eliciting overwhelming emotions not yet sufficiently investigated.
1 Nephew of the two great actors, John Philip Kemble and of Mrs. Siddons ; brother of Adelaide and of Fanny Kemble, and having at least four other near relations who were noted actors.
