tipsy derry-downs, and the serenader became a midnight bully. In the days of Elizabeth, and of James and Charles, the people were surrounded with music, and imbued with musical associations. The cittern was heard in every barber's shop; and even up to the publication of the 'Tatler' it was the same: "Go into a barber's anywhere, no matter in what district, and it is ten to one you will hear the sounds either of a fiddle or guitar, or see the instruments hanging up somewhere." The barbers or their apprentices were the performers: "If idle, they pass their time in life-delighting music." Thus writes a pamphleteer of 1597. Doctor King, about the beginning of the last century, found the barbers degenerating in their accomplishments, and he assigns the cause: Turning themselves to periwig-making, they have forgot their cittern and their music." The cittern twanged then in the barbers' shops in the fresh mornings especially; and then came forth the carman to bear his loads through the narrow thoroughfares. He also was musical. We all know how Falstaff describes Justice Shallow: "He came ever in the rear-ward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the over-scutched housewives that he heard the carmen whistle." The carmen had a large stock of tunes. In Ben Jonson's' Bartholomew Fair,' one of the characters exclaims, "If he meet but a carman in the street, and I find him not loth to keep him off of him, he will whistle him and all his tunes over at night in his sleep." a century later even, "barbers, cobblers, and plowmen " were enumerated as "the heirs of music." Who does not perceive that when Isaac Walton's milk-maid sings"Come live with me and be my love," Half These charming words 66 she is doing nothing remarkable? were the common possession of all. heirs of poetry as well as of music. delicious madrigals to sing, in which to immortal verse," and they could sing them. Morley, writing in 1597, says, "Supper being ended, and music-books, according to custom, being brought to the table, the mistress of the house presented me with a part, earnestly requesting me to sing; but when, after many excuses, I protested unfeignedly that I could not, every one began to wonder-yea, some whispered to others, demanding how I was brought up." A little band was called "a noise of musicians;" it was to be found everywhere; and attended upon the guests in taverns and ordinaries, and at " good men's feasts" in private houses. In Ben Jonson's 'Silent Woman,' it is said, "the smell of the venison, going through the streets, will invite one noise of fiddlers or other;" and again, "They have intelligence of all feasts; there's good correspondence betwixt them and the London cooks." Feasts were then not mere occasions for gluttony and drunkenness, as they became in the next generation. As the drunkenness went on increasing, the taste for music went on diminishing. The street music was an indication of the popular taste. The execrable sounds which the lame and the blind produced were the mere arts of mendicancy. The principle of extorting money by hideous sounds was carried in London as far as it could go by a fellow of the name of Keiling, called Blind Jack, who performed on the flageolet with his nose. Every description of street exhibition was accompanied with terrible noises. In the fashionable squares, towards the close of the last century, matters were a little mended. After the peace our thoroughfares gradually resounded with the somewhat improved melody of the street-singers of Paris; and a lady with a neat coiffure accompanied the organ with the monotonous chant of "Le gai Troubadour." An Italian was now and then imported with his guitar; and his knowledge of harmony compensated for his somewhat cracked voice. All at once glee-singers started up; and they are now common. Then a 66 noise" or two of really tolerable instrumental performers were to be found in Portland Place and other streets of the west; and even those who were familiar with Rossini might stop to listen. are still advancing. We The Waits are a relic of the old musical times of England; and let us cherish them, as the frosted bud of a beautiful flower that has yet life in it. MY FIRST GRIEF. The UNTIL I had reached my thirtieth year, I had known nothing of what I can properly term sorrow. The evils of mortality had not begun to come home to me. wings of the destroying angel had rested upon the dwellings of my neighbours; but death had never yet crossed my threshold, and sickness seldom. I had heard the voice of misery like the mutterings of a distant storm; but the thunder had not yet burst over my head—I had not covered my eyes from the passing lightning. Though the images of decay are all around us, yet the idea of vitality triumphs over their impressions. We behold the grave opened for some one that we have known in all enjoyment of existence—and we offer a fleeting sigh for the instability of life. The consciousness is but for a moment. We mingle with busy faces, and we forget that there is a land where the sound of this restlessness shall be rife no more-we look upon the blue skies of youthful pleasure, and we think not of the night without a star; we behold the "splendour in the grass," and we reckon not, that in the evening it is "cut down, dried up, and withered." This is a wise provision of our nature. If the "end-all" were continually in view, the "be-all" would stagnate. The shepherd-boy in Arcadia "piped on as if he should never grow old."* And why should he have stopped the full tide of his animal joy by speculating upon its ebbing? He lived not amongst mouldering piles, which told a tale of the vanity of life. His home was in the quiet fields, where age and decay showed only as exceptions to the general principle of youth and lustihood. The heavens are old; but they look as fresh and as pure as the smile of infancy: and the sun rejoiceth as a bridegroom to run his course." As the shepherd in Arcadia piped on with his full heart, so walked I from * Sir Philip Sydney. my schoolboy years to manhood. I became blessed with a wife, and with children. I had hours of anxiety, but not of pain. The duties of the present time frequently pressed heavily on me; but the future still sparkled like a beaming morning. There might be carelessness in this; but there was not insensibility. I sat down on my fifth wedding-day to look back upon my happiness. I found a tear upon my cheek-but it was the tear of gratitude. The poetry of the heart is always worth something, and I therefore copy the following sonnet from my journal of that day : Sarah, my gentle wife, five tranquil years, Of feelings interchang'd, and raptures high, We had a little boy that was advancing towards his fourth year. He was our only son; and our comfort, therefore, was bound up with his well-being, by an excess of the fond anticipations which parents indulge of the future prosperity of their offspring. He had nothing of the boisterous happiness of childhood about him; but he seemed to live in a tranquil enjoyment of the delights that nature had scattered at his feet; and he grew in the breeze and the sunshine, a creature of pure and gentle elements. He had few affections, but they were unusually strong. Two beings he loved with an intense -passion-his mother, and a kind and single-hearted man, who delighted to have my little boy by his side when he weeded his garden, who culled for him the brightest rosebuds, and who would hold him for hours in his arms, to look upon the swallows as they dipped their rapid wings into the clear and silent stream that flowed by my cottage. If ever human beings were entirely happy, it was this honest man and my poor child; as they wandered about from the rising to the setting sun, exchanging those most innocent thoughts which the rough touch of worldly feelings will in a moment destroy; but which rest upon the untainted soul, like bloom upon the ripening fruit. My boy gradually sickened: there was a languor in his eyes which told of growing disease; there was a torpor in his movements which spoke of feebleness and pain. The spring came, but he did not float upon its gales like the butterfly. While the crocus leapt out of the earth to proclaim the approaching hours of renovation, the work of decay was begun in the sapling whose blossoms and fruit showed so richly in my day-dreams. I saw him once more enjoy the sunshine-but it was in his nurse's arms. The crisis quickly approached. I sat by his bed for two days and nights, regardless of anything in the world but my sick boy. The wrestlings with death of a firm mind and a mature body must be fearful;-but who can gaze without shuddering upon the agonies of infancy? Who can see the burning fever pass over the trembling lips of childhood, like the hurricane sweeping the lily, without shrinking from the sight of this contest between weakness and power ? I looked out for a moment from the chamber of suffering, upon the face of the bright and tranquil world,-when I turned again to my boy, the hand of love was closing his eyes. I now knew for the first time what it was to have death about our hearths. The excitement of hope and fear in a moment passes away; and the contest between feeling and reason begins, with its alternation of passion and listlessness. It is some time before the image of death gets possession of the mind. We sleep, perchance, amidst a feverish dream of gloomy and indistinct remembrances— the object of our grief, it may be, has seemed to us present, in health and animation-we wake in a struggle between the shadowy and the real world-and we require an effort of the intellect to believe that the earthly part |