but in true, brave, cheerful right heartedness: Song is the halo that consecrates industry. There is no more pleasant sound in all creation than that of the labourer singing at his work, how is it that we have not in England the breath of melody to fan the enfeebled pulses of the labourer. Over fields and workshops, through mines and factories the songs usually sung are either coarse, licentious, or meaningless; England has but little national song worthy of the name, song that penetrates every avenue of the heart, song thrilling every chord of the spirit; song stirring up old memories and associations; bringing back upon the enlinked chains of harmony, old words, familiarising the mind with old legends and traditions, and the historic life of other days in the land. Song awakening within the spirit every happy, holy, human emotion not a homily, not a sermon, not logic, not sentimental twiddle de dee, but high chaste, rousing genuine noble song-it is an everlasting remembrancer and incentive to pure deeds and recollections, a nation wanting in good song is wanting in much by which a nation preserves its moral breath pure and healthy, and we should think the loss of this feature most disastrous in a land like Englandwere it not supplied by a flood of religious melody so soft, spiritual and prophetic, that the world have known nothing like it since the days of the Hebrew Seers.

Time was, perhaps, when the pursuits of the people were hallowed by the breath of song, when men were apparently not the care-worn travel-stained beings they now appear to be; in the following eloquent words, Allan Cunningham truthfully describes the free valence of Scottish song and how universal it every where at one time spread its spell and its charm.

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Song followed the bride to the bridal chamber, and the corpse when folded in its winding-sheet,—the hag

as she gratified her own malicious nature with an imagery spell for her neighbour's harm, and her neighbour who sought to counteract it. Even the enemy of salvation solaced, according to a reverend authority, his conclave of witches with music and with verse. The soldier went to battle with songs and with shouts; the sailor, as he lifted his anchor for a foreign land, had his song also, and with song he welcomed again the re appearance of his native hills. Song seems to have been the regular accompaniment of labour: the mariner dipped his oar to its melody; the fisherman dropped his net into the water while chanting a rude lyric or rhyming invocation; the farmer sang while he consigned his grain to the ground; the maiden, when the corn fell as she moved her sickle; and the miller had also his welcoming song, when the meal gushed warm from the mill. In the south I am not sure that song is much the companion of labour; but in the north there is no trade, however toilsome, which has banished this charming associate. It is heard among the rich in the parlour, and among the menials in the hall; the shepherd sings on his hill, the maiden as she milks her ewes; the smith as he prepares his wielding heat, the weaver as he moves his shuttle from side to side; and the mason, as he squares or sets the palace stone, sings to make labour feel lightsome, and the long day seem short. Even the West India slaves chant a prolonged and monotonous strain while they work for their taskmasters; and I am told they have a deep sense of sweet music, and no inconsiderable skill in measuring out words to correspond with it.

The current of song has not always been poured forth in an unceasing and continued stream. Like the rivulets of the north, which gush out into rivers during the season of rain, and subside and dry up to a few reluctant drops in the parching heat of summer, it has

had its seasons of overflow, and its period of decrease. Yet there have been invisible spirits at work, scattering over the land a regular succession of lyrics, more or less impressed with the original character of the people, the productions of random inspiration, expressing the feelings and the story of some wounded heart, or laughing out in the fullest enjoyment of the follies of man and the pleasant vanities of woman. From them, and from poets to whose voice the country has listened in joy, and whose names are consecrated by the approbation of generations, many exquisite lyrics have been produced which find an echo in every heart, and are scattered wherever a British voice is heard, or a British foot imprinted. Wherever our sailors have borne our thunder, our soldiers our strength, and our merchants our enterprise, Scottish song has followed, and awakened a memory of the north land amid the hot sands of Egypt and the frozen snows of Siberia. The lyric voice of Caledonia has penetrated from side to side of the Eastern regions of spice, and has gratified some of the simple hordes of roving Indians with a melody equalling or surpassing their own. Amid the boundless forests and mighty lakes and rivers of the western world, the songs which gladdened the hills and vales of Scotland have been awakened again by a kindred people; and the hunter, as he dives into the wilderness, or, sails down the Ohio, recalls his native hills in his retrospective strain. These are no idle suppositions which enthusiasm creates for natural vanity to repeat. For the banks of the Ganges, the Ohio, and the Amazons, for the forests of America, the plains of India, and the mountains of Peru, or Mexico, for the remotest isles of the sea, the savage shores of the north, and the classic coasts of Asia or Greece, I could tell the same story which the Englishman told, who

heard, two hundred years ago, the song of Bothwell Bank sung in the land of Palestine.

And (to take another quotation,) who does not thrill while reading the following truly glowing words of Professor Wilson, describing the probable origin of Scottish Song.

"The old nameless song-writers, buried centuries ago in kirkyards that have themselves perhaps ceased to exist yet one sees sometimes lonesome burial-places among the hills, where man's dust continues to be deposited after the house of God has been removed elsewhere the old nameless song-writers, took hold out of their stored hearts of some single thought or remembrance, surpassingly sweet at the moment over all others, and instantly words as sweet had being, and breath themselves forth along with some accordant melody of the still more olden time; or when musical and poetical genius happily met together, both alike passion inspired, then was born another new tune or air, soon treasured within a thousand maidens' hearts, and soon flowing from lips that 'murmured near the living brooks a music sweeter than their own.' Had boy or virgin faded away in untimely death, and the green mound that covered them, by the working of some secret power far within the heart, suddenly risen to fancy's eye, and then as suddenly sunk away into oblivion with all the wavering burial-place? Then was framed dirge, hymn, elegy, that, long after the mourned and the mourner were forgotten, continued to wail and lament up and down all the vales of Scotland -for what vale is unvisited by such sorrow ?—in one same monotonous melancholy air, varied only as each separate singer had her heart touched and her face saddened with a fainter or stronger shade of pity or grief. Had some great battle been lost and won, and to the shepherd on the braes had a faint and far-off sound

seemed on a sudden to touch the horizon like the echo of a trumpet? Then had some ballads its birth, heroic yet with dying falls, for the singer wept, even as his heart burned within him, over the princely head pros. trated with all its plumes, haply near the lowly woodsman, whose horn had often startled the deer as together they trode the forest-chase, lying humble in death by his young lord's feet! Ob, blue-eyed maiden, even more beloved than beautiful! how couldst though ever find heart to desert thy minstrel, who for thy sake would have died without one sign given to the disappearing happiness of sky and earth-and, witched by some evil spell, how couldst thou follow an outlaw to foreign lands, to find alas! some day a burial in the great deep? Thus was enchained in sounds the complaint of disappointed, defrauded, and despairing passion, and another air filled the eyes of our Scottish maidens with a new luxury of tears-a low flat tune, surcharged throughout with one groan-like sigh, and acknowledged, even by the gayest heart, to be indeed the language of an incurable grief. Or flashed the lover's raptured hour across the brain-yet an hour, in all its rapture, calm as the summer sea-or the level summit of a far flushing forest asleep in sunshine, when there is not a breath in heaven? Then thoughts that breathe, and words that burn-and, in that wedded verse and music, you feel that love is heaven, and heaven is love!' But affection, sober, sedate, and solemn, has its sudden and strong inspirations-sudden and strong as those of the wildest and most fiery passion. Hence the old grey-haired poet and musician, sitting, haply blind, in shade or sunshine, and bethinking him of the days of his youth, while the leading hand of his aged Alice gently touches his arm, and that voice of hers that once lilted like the linnet, is now like that of the dove in its lonely tree, mourns not