"What think you that he laughed? "With that into the City Away the Devil went, To view the merchants' dealings And there, along the brave Exchange, "He went into the City, To see all there was well; The Devil laughed a · loud. current taste for foreign songs, which had become fashionable even in the reign of Charles I. After the invention of recitative, English musicians were willing to concede the superiority of the Italians in vocal music; but it seems to have been as generally conceded that the English bore the palm in instrumental composition. There were not wanting some protests against the prevailing taste for Italian songs among cultivated people. "This present generation is so sated with what's Their scales were false, their weights were light, native." wrote Henry Lawes, in 1653 Their conscience fit for hell; And bad men' chosen Magistrates, And Puritans allowed, - Huggle, duggle, etc. "With that into the country "With that the Devil in haste That all on earth was well; That falsehood there did flourish, Plain-dealing was in a cloud, Huggle, duggle, ha, ha, ha, The devils laughed aloud.” According to one authority, "from the restoration of Charles II. may be dated an entire change in the style of music till then cultivated in England." The "learned counterpoint" and elaborate working-up which distinguished English composition, both vocal and instrumental, gave way to a more flowing and melodious style, and to a con (the friend of Milton and composer of the music to Comus), “that nothing takes the ear but what's sung in a language which, commonly, they understand as little as they do the music. And to make them a little sensible of this ridiculous humor, I took a table or index of old Italian songs, and this index, which read together made a strange medley of nonsense, I set to a varied air, and gave out that it came from Italy, whereby it passed for a rare Italian song. This very song have I here printed." Pepys, who could sing at sight, play on the lute, the viol, the violin, and the flageolet, and compose music, wrote in his diary, on hearing a celebrated Italian piece, "Fine it was indeed, and too fine for me to judge of"; and again, of a lady's singing, "Indeed, she sings mightily well and just after the Italian manner, but yet do not please me like one of Mrs. Knipp's songs, to a good English tune, the manner of their ayre not pleasing me so well as the fashion of our own, nor so natural." The dramatists of the day "commonly attribute to the servants in their plays the ability to sing at 'first sight'"; and Pepys with his wife and her maid and his own waiting-boy used to sit in his garden "singing and fiddling" till midnight, "with mighty pleasure to ourselves and neighbors by their casements opening," and "a great joy it is to see me master of so much pleasure in my house." Of the many popular songs of this period, the following is a sprightly and original melody; the words are from a balladopera called "The Jovial Crew": There was a maid went to the mill, Sing trolly, lol ly, lolly, lolly lo, The Chorus. mill turned round, but the maid stood still, Oh, oh, ho! Oh, oh, ho! Oh, oh, ho! did she so? a lul la by. sing with great applause two successive seasons in London, and spread into all the great towns of England, and into Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; it banished for the time the Italian opera, which had been the height of fashion for ten years; and it was followed by a host of similar works, ballad-operas being written even for "booths in Bartholomew Fair." Chappell records a story of Rich, the manager, who, when the customary music [before the play] was called for by the audience at the first performance of The Beggars' Opera,' came forward and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, there is no music to an opera,' (setting the house 66 If one doth rest in God, we well may think The hand of Prayer Love's holy lamp doth trim. Were the dear dead once heedless of God's will, Charlotte F. Bates. VOL. XXXI.—NO. 184. ΤΟ I BOY-LIFE IN A SCOTTISH COUNTRY-SEAT. A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. MUST have been, from my earliest years, a very self-willed youngster, I recollect my mother telling me of some of her troubles, dating from the time when I was still unable to walk; the old story of the baby screaming persistently, if refused anything he had set his little heart on. Very gentle though she was, the doctrine of innate depravity, in which she had been bred, urged her to slap me into quiet. But my father an advocate of system, and an undoubting believer in his favorite tenet that "man's character is formed for him, not by him" - stoutly opposed that. Yet the screams, whenever my mother objected to having her lace collar torn. or a teacup, of some old china-set, snatched from the table and flung to the floor, remained a stubborn reality which no theory could get over ; and it seriously disturbed my father as Iwell as the rest of the house. Something must be done. "When the child screams from temper, my dear Caroline" (my father thought my mother's middle name more romantic than the plain Ann; but I think I should have called her Annie), "when the child screams, set him in the middle of the nursery floor, and be sure you don't take him up till he stops crying." trying innocent experiments on teacup or collar, I was carried off to the nursery and set down, screaming lustily, on mid-floor. My mother must have suffered dreadfully for the next hour; but soon after that the fury of disappointment wore itself out, and I dropped asleep on the pillow behind me. This punishment had to be repeated five or six times. My mother was beginning to despair when she found, one day, to her great relief, that baby could be crossed in his wishes and made to give up, with just a little fretting. After a time even the fretting ceased. The infant culprit had learned a great lesson in life, submission to the in evitable. This was all very well; but the temper remained, and culminated, six or seven years after the nursery experiments, in a fit of indignant rage, af.er this wise. Braxfield House was situated about half-way between the village of New Lanark and the ancient shire-town of Lanark. The latter is famed in Scottish history; and on "the Moor" near to it wappin-schaws used to be held in the olden time. There was no postoffice in the village, and one of the supplementary workmen there, a certain But, my dear, he'll go on crying James Dunn, an old spinner who had by the hour." "Then let him cry." "It may hurt his little lungs, and perhaps throw him into spasms.” "I think not. At all events it will hurt him more if he grows up an ungovernable boy. Man is the creature of circumstances." My mother, who had been a dutiful daughter, was also an obedient wife, and she had a great respect for my father's judgment in temporal mat ters. So the next time I insisted on lost an arm by an accident in the mills, was our letter-carrier, the bearer of a handsome leather bag with gay brass padlock, which gave him a sort of official dignity in the eyes of the rising generation; and by this time there were some three or four young vineshoots growing up around the Owen family table. If James Dunn had lost one arm, he made excellent use of the other; constructing bows and arrows and fifty other nice things, for our delectation, |
