less and mute? Sweetly singeth the tea-kettle; merrily danceth the parched pea on the fire-shovel ! Even grim Death has his dance." "And music, Eugenio, in which I know you are an enthusiast. What says the immortal?" 'The man that hath not music in himself, Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils : The motions of his spirit are dull as night, Let no such man be trusted.' The Italians have a proverb, Whom God loves not, that man loves not music.' The soul is said to be music. 'Such harmony is in immortal souls; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.' - We read of the hymning of the morning stars, the music of the spheres: From harmony-from heavenly harmony This universal frame began; From harmony to harmony, Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in man.' And of the general effect of music, take the oft-quoted lines of Congreve, Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, To soften rocks, and bend the knotted oak.' Then talk no more, ye men of arts, 'bout keeping light and shade, And a dancing, &c. Great Whigs, and eke great Tories too, both in and out will dance, Let Oxford boast of ancient lore, or Cam of classic rules, And a dancing, &c. Old Homer sung of gods and kings in most heroic strains, And a dancing, &c. Poor Milton wrote the most sublime 'gainst Satan, Death, and Vice; And a dancing, &c. The soldier risks health, life, and limbs, his fortune to advance, 'Tis all in vain to sigh and grieve, or idly spend our breath, Yet while we live let 's merry be, and make of care a jest, And a dancing, &c." "Haydn used to say that melody was the soul of music, without which the most learned and singular combinations are but unmeaning, empty sound. What but the elegant simplicity and pathetic tenderness of the Scotch and Irish airs constitute their charm? This great composer was so extravagantly fond of Scotch, Irish, and Welsh melodies, that he harmonised many of them, and had them hung up in frames in his room. We remember to have heard somewhere of an officer in a Highland regiment, who was sent with a handful of brave soldiers to a penal settlement in charge of a number of convicts; the Highlanders grew sick at heart; the touching strains of Lochaber nae mair,' heard far from home, made them so melancholy, that the officer in command forbade its being played by the band. So, likewise, with the national melody, the Rans-desVaches' among the Swiss mountaineers. When sold by their despotic chiefs, and torn from their dearest connexions, suicide and desertion were so frequent when this melody was played, that orders were issued in all their regiments, prohibiting any one from playing an air of that kind on pain of death. La maladie du pays,-that sickening after home! But Handel's music has received more lasting and general applause than that of any other composer. By Boyce and Battishall his memory was adored; Mozart was enthusiastic in his praise; Haydn could not listen (who can ?) to his glorious Messiah1 without weeping; and Beethoven has been heard to declare, that were he ever to come to England he should uncover his head, and kneel down at his tomb! 1 'Blessings on the memory of the bard,' and Palms eternal Bishop Ken says, "Sweet music with blest poesy began, Saints praised the Godhead in devoted song." And he adds in plain prose, that the Garden of Eden was no stranger to “singing and the voice of melody." Jubal was the "father of those who handled the harp and organ." Long before the institution of the Jewish church, God received praise both by the human voice, and the "loud timbrel;" and when that church was in her highest prosperity, David, the King of Israel, seems to have been the composer of her psalmody-both poetry and music. He occupied the orchestra of the temple, and accounted it a holy privilege "to play before the Lord "upon" the harp with a solemn sound." Luther said, "I verily think that, next to divinity, no art is comparable to music." And what a glorious specimen of this divine art is his transcendant “ Hymn!" breathing the most awful grandeur, the deepest pathos, the most majestic adoration! The Puritans-for devils and Puritans hate music-are piously economical in their devotions, and eschew the principle" not to give unto the Lord that which costs us nothing!" Their gift is snuffled through the vocal nose-"O most sweet voices!" * A few old amateurs of music and mirth may possibly remember Collins's Evening Brush, that rubbed off the rust of dull care from the generation of 1790. His bill comprised "Actors of the old school, and actors of the new; tragedy tailors, and butchers in heroics; ghosts without their lessons, and readers without their eyes; bell-wethers in buskins, wooden actors, petticoat caricatures, lullaby jinglers, bogglers and blunders, buffoons in blank-verse, &c. &c." The first of the three Dibdins opened a shop of merriment at the Sans Souci, where he introduced many of his beautiful ballads, and sung them to his own tunes. The navy of England owe lasting obligations to this harmonious Three. It required not the aid of poetry and flourish round his arm, who int trues his lyre to celebrate the wooden walls of anconquered and unconquerice Merrie England! If earth hide him, • May ungeis with ner siver wngs d'estade ques nate;" if ocean cover him, can be the green wave in its sufice! May his spirit and rest where souls are blessed, and his body be shrined in the hottest care of the deep and slent sea.” -- Hark! the lark at Havens gite sings" "I was not unmindful of the merry coorister. Eugenio! Tis a welcome to the bright orb of day: ante of gritude to the giver of all good. But the lark has made a pause; and I have your promise of a song. Now is the time to up the cre, and to fulfi the other." And sweet the biossem on the mom. When mounts the hack on mod #inc Here let the spint, sore distress 4. The weary world is not the rest Where wounded bearts should seek repose. But, hark! the lark his merry strain, "Short and sad! Eugenio. We must away from these bewitching solitudes, or thy note will belong more to the nightingale than to the lark! Proceed we to those localities where musicians and music (and how exquisitely has Shield set the one to the other!) to stimulate our gallant seamen; but it needed much to awaken and keep alive enthusiasm on shore, and elevate their moral character- for landsmen who live at home at ease," were wont to consider the sailor as a mere tar-barrel, a sea-monster. How many young bosoms have been inspired by the lyrics of the three Dibdins! how have they soothed the dying hero, and embalmed his memory! What can surpass the homely pathos of I thought my heart would break when I sung, Yo! heave O!"The last Whistle," and "Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling?" stirring the manly heart like the sound of a trumpet! The last of the three Dibdins has just received a somewhat economical reward - a yearly pension of one hundred pounds. He had done the state some service," and was descending the downhill of life, destitute of those cheering appliances that the author of “ May we ne'er want a friend, nor a bottle to give him!" might have reasonably hoped for. How sad to cry Poor Tom's a-cold!" and remember the hearts he had warmed with patriotism and humanity! His lyre is not unstrung—there is yet music in the aged minstrel. Let him strike up, and we will ensure him a response; for Wellington has not conquered, nor Nelson died in vain. dancers most do congregate.1 Let imagination carry thee back to the reign of Queen Anne, when the Spectator and Sir Roger de Coverley embarked at the Temple-Stairs on their voyage to Vauxhall. We pass over the good knight's religious horror at beholding what a few steeples rose on the west of Temple-Bar; and the waterman's wit, (a common thing in those days,) that made him almost wish himself a Middlesex magistrate! We were now arrived at Spring Garden,' says the Spectator, which is exquisitely pleasant at this time of the year.3 When I considered the fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choir of birds that sung upon the trees, and the loose tribe of people that walked under their shades, I could not but look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan paradise. Sir Roger told me it put him in mind of a little coppice by his house in the country, which his chaplain used to call an aviary of nightingales.' “And mark, in what primitive fashion they concluded their walk with a glass of Burton-ale, and a slice of hung-beef! "Bonnel Thornton furnishes a ludicrous account of a stingy old citizen, loosening his purse-strings to treat his wife and family to Vauxhall. But Colin's Description to his wife of Greenwood Hall, or the pleasures of Spring Gardens,' gives by far the most lively picture of what this popular place of amusement was a century ago. 'O Mary soft in feature, I've been at dear Vauxhall; No paradise is sweeter, Not that they Eden call. At night such new vagaries, Such gay and harmless sport; All look'd like giant fairies, At this their monarch's court. 1 There were rare dancing doings at Barber's Hall, in the year 1745 The original dancing-room at the field-end of King-Street, Bloomsbury, 1742 Hickford's great room, Panton-Street, Haymarket, 1743 Mitre Tavern, Charing-Cross, 1743 Richmond Assembly, . 1745 Lambeth Wells, 1747 Duke's long room, Paternoster-Row, 1748 The large room next door to the Hand and Slippers, Long-Lane, West 1750 Lambeth Wells, where a Penny Wedding, in the Scotch manner, was cele brated for the benefit of a young couple, 1752 Old Queen's Head, in Cock-Lane, Lambeth, 1755 Large Assembly Room at the Two Green Lamps, near Exeter 'Change, (at the particular desire of Jubilee Dickey!) and at Mr. Bell's, at the sign of the Ship, in the Strand, where, in 1755, a Scotch Wedding was kept. The bride to be dressed without any linen; all in ribbons, and green flowers, with Scotch masks. There will be three bag-pipes; a band of Scotch music, &c. &c. To begin precisely at two o'clock. Admission, two shillings and sixpence." "O such were the joys of our dancing days!" ? What a sledge-hammer reply was Doctor Johnson's to an aquatic wag upon a similar occasion. "Fellow! your mother, under the pretence (!!!) of keeping a is a receiver of stolen goods!" 3 9 May 20, 1712. Methought when first I enter'd, Where rose another sun : Whilst music, never cloying, Here paintings, sweetly glowing, The king there dubs a farmer,' As still amazed, I'm straying I doft my hat, desiring He'd tune up Buxom Joan; But now the tables spreading, I long'd (poor starveling rover!) Thus whilst, 'mid joys abounding, The man i' th' moon tweer'd slyly, Soft twinkling through the trees, The days of this modern Arcadia are numbered. The axe is about to be laid to the roots of its beautiful trees; its green avenues are to be turned into blind alleys; its variegated lamps must give place to some solitary gas-burner, to light the groping inhabitants to their dingy homes; and the melodious strains of its once celebrated vocalists shall be drowned in the discordant dismal drone of some 1 Alluding to three pictures in the Pavilions, viz. the King and the Miller of Mansfield, the Sailors in a tippling house in Wapping,—and the Girl stealing a kiss from a sleepy gentleman. 2 The statue of Handel. 3 Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales sitting under her splendid Pavilion. |