Oliver Cromwell made of himself "the greatest person in England"-the absolute and undisputed despot of a liberty-loving people-the more than king of the most enlightened and the greates: nation of the day. The people did not elevate him-his own great genius and indomitable wil compelled their apparent elevation of him. Then mark the construction of the Commerwealth, and its manipulation by Cromwell: A! the first, Parliament seemingly rules; there is CROMWELL'S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, Where Charles's Death-Warrant was Signed. great Council State, comprs ing, among its forty members, such illustre 3 names as Whitelock, Bradshaw, Marten, St. Joan, Fairfax, Skippon, Sir Harry Vare, and others of great repute. Cromwe. is not the Pre dent or bead of this Council, ber merely a mem ber; Bradshaw s the President and John Milton the Secretary of the Council. But s the Council d pears from s". and Cromwell stands alone as "the greatest per these actually became contributors to his elevation | son;" he finds the Parliament an inconvenient o while others were borne down in the progress of his triumph. Hampden, the popular idol, died, as did the truly great man, the true-hearted patriot, John Pym. That Oliver Cromwell was one of the most wonderful men of the world's history it would be folly to question and those who have essayed to question it have only brought contempt upon themselves. His success in the Parliament, his marvelous success in the field of war, his success as a ruler, and, perhaps beyond all these, his success in the management and use of far greater and better men than himself-all these attest Cromwell's wonderful skill and ability, and accord to him an absolute and superlative genius. struction to his one-man sway and sweeps it out of his way. I shall not pause to speak of the spec acts of this military despot-the fact that he displayed magnificent skill and judgment, we moderation, and a fair, even large, measure of liberality in his reign, does not disprove, ar 12 the least militate, the other fact that he was the despot of the Commonwealth. But one farther, and most conclusive, item of evidence that the Commonwealth was not a Republic, and was not designed to be a Repub is found in his attempt, in kingly style, to dispos of the nation at his death as though it were estate, by naming his son, Richard, his heir, & his successor in the "Protectorate." The only work WENDING his way along the streets of the Town | of the science of music still less. of Boston one hundred years since might be daily seen a man in the prime of life, one whom fate and fortune seemed to have used hardly. Beside his lameness, one arm was withered and nearly useless, and one eye was forever darkened. His iron-buckled shoes were shabby, his stockings much darned, his torn breeches were fastened with cheap buckles, and those not mates, his coat had become one of many colors, his wig had lost its curl, and the cocked hat upon it had not been refreshed with a nap for many years. From his coat-pocket ever and anon he took a handful of snuff, with which he fed his nose from his clenched hand. This man was William Billings, born in Boston, October 7, 1747, the pioneer of American church music; for before his time there is no record of any musical composition by a native of this country. He was, moreover, one of the most zealous patriots of the day, and the companion of Samuel Adams, Dr. Pierce, and other leading men of the time. Of humble parentage, his opportunities for even a common education were very limited, and his means of acquiring a knowledge on music to be found in the colonies at that day was Tansur's " Musical Grammar," which he had probably never read; and if he had, it was a very imperfect guide. It is related that his first tunes. were written with chalk upon the walls of the bark-mill in Elliot street, when working at his trade as a tanner. At the dawn of the Revolution patriotic songs were unknown. Billings saw the effect his tunes had on the people when used in their meetings for worship, and, prompted by his ardent love of freedom, he composed or procured words combining religion and patriotism, which he set to music. His tune Chester, to which he attached the words, "Let tvrants shake their iron rod And slavery clank her galling chains; And generals yield to beardless boys," eve of battle; by the camp-fire of the New England soldier might be heard the strains of Billings. While Boston was occupied by the British troops, and the American were stationed at Watertown, Billings composed and published his celebrated anthem, "The Lamentation over Boston." The words were partly a paraphrase of the 137th Psalm, together with some of his own peculiar rhymes. "By the rivers of Watertown we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Boston. As for our friends, Lord God of heaven, preserve them, defend them, deliver and restore them unto us again! For they that held them in bondage required of them to be in arms against their brethren. Forbid it, Lord God, that those who have sucked Bostonian breasts should thirst for American blood! A voice was heard in Roxbury which echoed through the continent, weeping for Boston because of their danger. Is Boston my dear town, is it my native place? for since their calamity I do earnestly remember it still. If I forget thee, yea, if I do not remember thee, Then let my numbers cease to flow, Then let my tongue forget to move, Let horrid jargon split the air, And rive my nerves asunder; Let hateful discord greet my ear, As terrible as thunder; Let harmony be banish'd hence, Let dissonance erect her throne On the 5th of March, 1783, the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, after an oration by Dr. Thomas Welsh, and the other exercises of the day were concluded, a town-meeting was held at Faneuil Hall, of which James Otis was moderator. The Town Clerk proposed, and the meeting unanimously adopted, the following preamble and resolution: "WHEREAS, the annual celebration of the Boston Massacre on the 5th March, 1770, by the institution of a public oration, has been found to be of eminent advantage to the cause of virtue and patriotism among her citizens; and whereas the immediate motives which induced the commemoration of that day do now no longer exist in their primitive force, while the benefits resulting to the institutions do, may, and ought to be forever preserved by exchanging that anniversary for another, the foundation of which will last as long as time endures. It is therefore Resolved, That the celebration of the fm: cf March from henceforth shall cease, and the is stead thereof the anniversary of the 4th of July, 1776 (a day ever memorable in the annals of th country for the declaration of our independence. shall be constantly celebrated by the delivery na public oration in such place as the Towns' | determine to be most convenient for the pure, in which the orator shall consider the feeling. manners and principles which led to this gre national event, as well as the important and happy effects, whether general or domestic, which areat have and will forever continue to flow from t auspicious epoch." In conformity with this resolution, on the day of July, 1783, the inhabitants of the town o Boston assembled in the Brattle Square Church (Faneuil Hall not being large enough to cor them), where, after prayer by the pastor of church, Rev. S. Cooper, and an oration by De John Warren, the following anthem, conjess for the occasion by William Billings, was sung: "The States, O Lord, with songs of praise, Shall in thy strength rejoice, And, blest, with thy salvation raise To the King they shall sing Hallels ah Thy goodness and thy tender care Hath all our fears destroyed; A covenant of peace thou mads't with us, And all the continent shall sing, Nothing but God; And the continent shall sing, God is our rightful King. They shall sing to their King, Hallelujah! World without end, On every part of the Continent! May harmony and peace Begin and never cease, And may the strength increase on the continent, The glory and the fame of our Heavenly King. And all the earth acknowledge Between 1770 and 1791, Billings published <1 tune-books, the music being almost entire > own composition; and on the 26th day of ser tember, 1800, closed his harmonious lite in City of Boston. His melodies and some of ba tunes, in almost their original form, are s used, and will outlive thousands of more mode date. THOR AND ODIN; OR, THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE NORSEMEN. BY WILLIAM HENRY THORNE. BACK of and beneath all human mental or spir- | Odin, which simply proves that he is later recogitual energy, clearness and victory, are the primal nized as a god. centuries of physical endeavor; struggling for life, for bread. The giants of hunger, of enmity, of frozen soil, of sickness, are to be perpetually subdued. Your Thor, ablest man of the able, is always in demand. The work of the sure foot, the keen eye, the strong arm, ever leading, though through the dark, by slow degrees, at last to a finer cerebro nervous, brainal energy; to dreams, to holy aspirations, conscience, sense of justice, laws, religions, temples made with hands and up to temples not made with hands, but with starfire, with the breath, the thoughts, the deeds of heroes crowned and rightly crowned as gods for all time. The myth is not some dream of the night. The soul of it is fact and verity. Indeed, it will be found that at the heart of all mythologies whatsoever, is some concrete truth of nature. The myth is the clearest possible expression at the hour, of the early opening human observation, the budding thought, the sacred aspiration of man. It is the tangible and supposed comprehensive and comprehensible record man makes of his sight and understanding of the origin and ways of nature and her dealings with her children. With Greek and Roman mythologies the modern world is pretty familiar. Even our lightest literature abounds with quotations therefrom. We know much of the myths of Egypt, India and China. Of the mythologies of the Norsemen, our forefathers, by whose blood and valor we live and move and have our best being to-day, we have until recently known but little. But now, happily, there are indications of a steady and reverent looking that way. Professor Anderson's recent work on "Norse Mythology," though somewhat diffused in its thoughts and expressions, and all too severe on the Greek side of the question, and Carlyle's fugitive papers on the early kings of Norway were a sort of fresh opening of the subject, and did much to create a new interest therein. As a matter of actual mythologic construction, Thor does not appear on the scene till long after VOL. VII.-17 As I detect these things, the Norseman, in the childhood and savagery of his race found himself, as in fact each human child to-day to an alarming extent finds himself, even at its mother's breast, but more painfully on leaving it, finds himself surrounded by well-nigh universal, hard yielding chaos, out of which, by here and there a lucid ray, various gods arise, followed by many changing theories regarding them. We too, soon settle to some spot or evolved growth of nature, our Ygdrasil or tree of living to us, about which the serpents of temptation twine, but over which, thanks to the eternal sunlight, the angels hover and may be seen. Our fights too, are numerous; the brave work and battle go on, and the workers and the sons of valor, ever move through multiplied endeavor to their "home-going," the best of us reaching our Gladheims," halls of joy, and our "Valhallas," groves of the beautiful, dwelling-places of the heroes and the gods. It is one and the same march, the sons of men are all and always taking from the earliest primal mornings, "Niflheim," world of mist and shadow, through "Musspellheim" or "Mispelheim," the paths of fire and ice, till we pass the "Mountaingates' of truth, our silent hearts held fast in our brave hands. Our "Christian" ways, the mere externals of our life, are so different, and even the best accounts we have in English of these Norsemen being somewhat mixed, it is difficult to reach the real spirit and grasp the entire scope of the Northern life and mythology. Doubtless for many long, dreary centuries after the first actual Norsemen were evolved from "The Old World Simiada" or other group of “ Anthropomorphous Monkeys," they and their children's children, through the long twilights and nights of those cold Northern regions, used to sit or recline, shivering, musing, moping, puzzling their narrow heads, and chattering in their monosyllabic, gruff way, over the origin of things and the meanings of things; where the world came from, and how it came, where they themselves came from, and how; and whither, to what end, was all things tending. The results of these centuries of musing, the early crude literature of the first voices of the ice mountains to their children, and some later voices were preserved for the later Norsemen and for us, for all men and all times, for there are immortal words and melodies in them, were preserved by the Skalds, wandering minstrels of Sweden, Norway, and Iceland; sung by them in a wild, patriotic, feeling, reverent sort of way for many generations; the wealthier, more industrious and successful of the early peoples, remunerating them, and the waiting, listening crowds giving them their admiration. From the Skalds, and after how many centuries of their chanting and repeating them it is now impossible to tell, these earlier and later musings, thoughts, convictions, systematized ideas, were collected and have been handed down to us in what are called the Eddas, actually, "great-grandmothers," the elder Edda being in poetry, the structural or poetic literary peculiarities of which it is not for us here to dwell upon, and the younger Edda in prose. Speculations as to when and by whom these were collected, are not to our purpose and will not here be touched. These Eddas, and all the mythologies, wordlegends, they contain, when well sifted and briefly put into our English speech of to-day are found to treat first, of nature in her supposed primal condition; second, of nature in the process of being made, evolved or shaped into a world, especially the Norseman's Norway part of the world; third, of the generation and evolution of man out of the world; fourth, of the combined ways of nature in her dealings with man and of man's appreciations of nature and his responding action toward her, and the inevitable results flowing to man and his life therefrom; fifth, of the conduct, doings and exploits of men with each other, in a word, of the life of nature and man; sixth, and growing out of the fourth and fifth, of heroic deeds and darings of heroic men, personified embodiments of nature's noblest, clearest and strongest forces, leading to their deification, hence of the livings and darings of the gods; seventh, the good and evil, helpful and harmful principles of life are recognized as in antagonism, and efforts at explanation and reconciliation attempted; eighth, of the outcome, the end of all this mingling life of nature, gods and men, the Norseman's es chatology or destruction of the world and me.; ninth, of the resurrection of nature and ma, the new heavens and new earth and new hum and human life that were to arise from the se mist of the burning ice mountains and frug te burnt ashes of Odin and of Thor. Out of the heart of nature did all this mung spring; it marches firm, strong, and gan through the generations, looking beautiful as the birth of morning, and here and there giving firth snatches of melodious harmony, as of the music o the spheres. To the early Norsemen, in those long mirge and chattings, naturally enough primal nature pesented itself moving under somewhat sin lar ca ditions and arrangements to those actually tak ; place day by day under his own home user vations, verifying again the old proverb, P look when or where we will, we see only wh is in our own eyes or immediately passing under our eyes. To him in those first wakings and cogitatings, primal nature was a bottomless, ita itless, seething chaos of mist; such as, in t he must often have seen in the dawning of t day, when the sun-rays played upon the at clad mountains; a universe of mist (“N.fi e m through which flows an absorbing fountain wer gelmer), or, as some have it, "Bergelmer," a s of dim centre of the mist, and perhaps later per sonified as the only ice giant who survived the tar struggles and slaughters, drownings of the gut and the gods. Thus from the elder Edda, a s apparently embodying both ideas, Winters past counting, Was stowed safe in his skiff' From this heart or fountain of the mist f numerous liquid streams, which after flowing the destined time and way, harden and freeze to x2 thus flowing and freezing, the ice mountars at formed. Besides the nebulous region of cold mist +b forming the mountains there is a nebulous reg of fire ("Mispelheim"), the warm rays of falling upon the ice-filled region melt the we, t drops from which become living by the power the Unknown, and from these melted drops sprang 1 Anderson's "Norse Mythology," page 175 |