With these words he took down the "Lay of the Laureate," saying, "How deeply was the nation indebted to Southey,-and how much have the present generation been benefited by ftanzas fuch as these!" "From nature's hand like plastic clay they come To take from circumftance their woe or weal; "Is it then fitting that one soul should pine For lack of culture in this favour'd land? That fpirits of capacity divine Perish, like feeds upon the defert fand? "Little can private zeal effect alone; The state muft this state-malady redress! So in their duty states must find at length, "This the first duty, carefully to train The children in the way that they should go; Then of the family of guilt and pain, How large a part were banish'd from below! How should they love with fureft caufe Their country, and revere their venerable laws? "Is there, alas, within the human foil, An inbred taint difpofing it for ill? Neglected, it is choked with tears, and noxious weeds." I was delighted with the words, and as I went down to wander on the feafhore, and to liften to the foothing laugh of the waters, I faid, 'He who will not liften when wisdom fpeaks fhall never be wife himself!' Mufic as a part of Education: Humanizing effects of: Pfalmody: Hymns, &c., &c. "The reptile race And every beaft of rapine had retired From man's afferted empire; and the found Of axe, and dashing oar, and fifher's net, Madoc, Part And fong beguiling toil, and paftoral pipe Were heard, where late the folitary hills Their wild refponse." "La Mufique. Luther la confidérait comme un art qui appartenoit à la Théologie, et fervoit puiffamment à déveloper les fentimens religieux dans le cœur de l'homme." "Mufic, both vocal and inftrumental, is of eminent ufe in fetting forth the praises of God; but there is no inftrument like the rational foul, and no melody like that of well-tuned affections. When this mufic accompanies the other, the facred harmony of the Church is complete." "It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute HE Old Vicar was a great lover Madame de Tennyfon's Lib. i. c. ii. that the improvement in all our country Quires was a good fign, as well as a teft of the Progress of Education. "In my boyish days," he would add, “I was a great reader of Cicero, and I remember at this moment,old and grey-headed,-with what delight I devoured the paffage following from the Tufculan Disputations. Summam eruditionem Græci fitam cenfebunt in nervorum vocumque cantibus. Igitur et Epaminondas princeps, meo judicio, Græciæ fidibus præclare ceciniffe dicitur: Themistoclefque aliquot ante annos, cum in epulis recufaret lyram, eft habitus indoctior. Ergo in Græcia mufici floruerunt; difcebantque id omnes; nec qui nefciebat fatis excultus doctrina putabatur." Certainly there is mufic in fuch profe! We know what is the influence of popular airs, of national fongs,-of fofter founds and cadences, as they fall upon the ear. Hear what the palm and prince of Knighthood faid, Knitena-gade, one fitted to give a name to Nightingale Street,-"Certainly I must confefs mine own barbarousnefs; I never heard the old fong of Percy and Douglas," (that is, Chevy Chace, or the Battle of Otterburn, equally beloved by Ben Jonfon,) "that I found not my heart i.e. the Knight's Sidney's Defence Talboys. moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is fung but by fome blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude ftyle; which being fo evil apparelled in the duft and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?” Who loves not the melody of village bells,or of cathedral chimes,-the very "poetry of fteeples" as Ben Jonfon ventures to speak? Seem they not, as it were, to proclaim peace, and to fay to difference and diffenfion, Be ftill! Catch we not at all founds which lull the mind, and tend to lengthen tranquillity? How very home-coming are thofe lines of Beattie. "But who the melodies of morn can tell! The wild brook babbling down the mountain's fide; The hum of bees, and linnet's lay of love, And the full quire that wakes the universal grove!" Who, indeed, is not alive to the distant murmur of the peaceful fea, when it holds its fabbath on some summer's night? who liftens not to the carol of birds,—to the sheep-bell from the Down-fide mellowed by the dews of 1 Sir J. Hawkins remarks in his Hiftory of Mufic, "The mufic of bells is altogether melody, but the pleasure arifing from it confifts in the variety of interchanges, and the various fucceffion and general predominance of the confonances in the founds produced." Vol. iv. 152, 4to. |