Well, marshal," said I," the fact is, he wants the poor fellows to sleep upon them. That is the only sort of bed he allows them, and because they murmur at such accommodation, he protests that he will get them punished, and, he hopes, even hanged." 66 Blood-thirsty old scoundrel!" cried the marshal, addressing himself to the eloquent native; "hold your tongue, and don't attempt to get honest fellows into trouble. If I were they, I'm blessed if I wouldn't burn all your vine-sticks." 'And, with that, off he rode at a hand-gallop, leaving the vine-dresser still gesticulating, and my two poor fellows thankful enough to find themselves on their feet. Now, if that provost-marshal had understood Portuguese, they would have danced upon nothing.' BALLAD-SUBJECTS. A FAIR test of the increasing interest that is felt in all that appertains to our old national literature is offered by the increased value obtained for specimens of it when offered for sale at public auctions. Some of these books fetch high prices on account of their rarity, and may have had no influence whatever on the national mind, but this cannot be said of a collection of ballads. Robert Harley, the first Earl of Oxford, began a collection of these popular compositions, which was sold along with his books, when it was bought by West, the president of the Royal Society; and at the subsequent sale of his library in 1773, it was bought by Major Pearson for, it is sup posed, L.20. This gentleman made considerable additions to it during the fifteen years it remained in his possession; but even then, when his collection of books went the way of the generality of such collections, it realised only L.36, the Duke of Roxburghe being the purchaser. The duke set about adding to the collection with great earnestness, and at the sale of his library they realised L.477. Mr Harding, who was the purchaser, sold them shortly after to Mr Bright for, it is said, L.700. These osculatory consolations were brought, however, to an abrupt termination in this case by the wreck of the vessel on the coast of Spain, and the entry of Constance into the port of Bilboa on a plank alone. There is very little of the supernatural in these ballads, the appearance of a deceased lover to his hard-hearted mistress being an accident of the ballad of a later date. But there is an exception to this in the ballad headed The Suffolk Miracle, or a Relation of a young Man who a Month after his Death appeared to his Sweetheart and carryed her behind Fourty Miles in two Hours' Time, and was never seene after but in the Grave. It is possible that this may have been the original of Bürger's Lenore, but it is more probable that both were derived from the same legend, of older date than either. Shooting has always been a favourite theme, from the days of Robin Hood, and probably long before, till now. Had a poet been present at the grand shootingmatch at Wimbledon, he might have celebrated that meeting in strains which would have furnished food for serious reflection; nor would the humorous have been wanting as a contrast. In the distribution of prizes, for instance, who could help laughing when Lord Elcho suggested, as the marksman who had been successful in winning the iron safe approached to receive his prize, that the band should strike up Wait for the Wagon? A poet was not wanting at a meeting of an analogous character held at York in the days of Queen Elizabeth, where equal skill was displayed, though the weapons used were bows and arrows instead of rifles. This was held under the inspection of the Earl of Cumberland, assisted by the Earl of Essex, who kept the field, and there was a strong muster of people of rank present, including three Russian ambassadors, one of whom tried to draw a bow, and was greatly astonished at the distance to which the English bowmen could send their arrows. After describing the shooting, the poet exclaims: God save the good Earle of Cumberlande; There are about 1300 songs and ballads in this collection. The date when the first was printed is supposed to have been 1560, but the date of printing is, of course, no criterion of the actual antiquity of the ballad. The subjects of these ballads are of all kinds, and it will only be possible to give an outline of one or two of each class, but this will be sufficient to afford an idea of what that literature was like which, with the chap-books, was all that was possessed by the masses in the olden time. Love is the burden of a considerable proportion of these, and it is curious to He follows this with a loyal and pious appeal : observe how popular the notion was of a man being loved by a woman of higher degree than himself. Thus, the earl was favoured by the queen, the squire of low degree by the earl's daughter, the daughter of the squire of a more modern type bestowed her affections on the handsome young farmer, and the farmer's daughter in her turn bestowed hers on the jolly young ploughman. When war happened to be raging, there was a facile method of disposing of the last-named individual; namely, causing him to be kidnapped, and sent to sea, in which case the young lady expressed her determination in the following or a similar manner: I will carie the praise to London. God save our queen, and keepe our peace, He concludes with an earnest request to her majesty Tell Alderman Maltbie this from me, The imprint on this ballad states that it was printed pronounce his doom; but Lord Howard did justice at London,neere Holbourne Bridge,' by Richard to the courage of his foe. You may thank God Jones, 1598. The following ballad will shew what English archers were capable of doing when engaged in actual combat ; it is headed, A True Relation of the Life and Death of Sir Andrew Barton, a Pyrate and Rover on the Seas. This view of Barton is, of course, an English one, but the writer does justice to his courage, and, moreover, he does not use the term 'pyrate' in the sense we attach to the word. The imprint states that it was sold at Pye Corner, but is without a date. It begins by saying, that as King Henry VIII. was out hunting, he stood on a mountain, and Forty merchants he espyed, With fifty saile come towards him. The object of their coming is explained when they throw themselves on their knees, and complain that they cannot go on their voyage on account of Sir Andrew Barton. On hearing this, the king appealed to those around him to know who will rid him of that Scottish traitor; whereupon Lord Charles Howard volunteered to bring Sir Andrew to England, or be himself taken to Scotland. His offer was accepted, and he lost no time in claiming the assistance of a gunner, Who was the best in all the realme, He was further strengthened with the assistance of a bowman, a Yorkshire gentleman named Horsley, who expressed his willingness to be hanged on the mainmast if he failed to hit a mark the size of a shilling at twelve score yards. Lord Howard sets sail, and meets with a merchant of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who had not long previously had his ship cleared out by the said Andrew Barton. To this man Howard offered three shillings for every penny he had lost if he would guide him to the place where he had been plundered; but the merchant exclaimed: 'God bless you from his tyranny, He carrieth on each side along.' Eventually, he agreed to guide the English ship to where Sir Andrew was cruising, and as she was sailing by, Barton fired a shot into her middle deck, which cruel shot killed fourteen men.' Simon responded with a discharge which killed fifteen Scotchmen, and was followed by Henry Hunt, who brought down fifty. Finding he was overmatched, Sir Andrew directed one Gordon and his nephew to go up and loosen sail; but these were killed by Horsley's arrows. His men being slain, then up amain Horsley managed, however, to find a spot through which he drove an arrow into his heart. The brave Scotchman did not give in even then, but called out: 'Fight on, fight on, my merry men all; A little I am hurt, yet not slain; I'll but lie down and bleed awhile, And come and fight with you again.' They were not to cease firing as long as they heard his whistle; but when this stopped, they stopped too, and the English came aboard. They found eighteen score Scots alive, and as many corpses, and among them that of Sir Andrew. Lord Howard is represented to have cut off his head, and to have returned to England with great joy and rejoicing. On his presenting himself before the king, the latter desired to have Barton brought before him, that he might And four men in the ship,' quoth he, Sith you never had such an enemy.' These men were duly rewarded. Lord Howard himself was made Earl Bury; seven shillings were given to every other man; and, what seems a rather remarkable act of generosity on the part of the king, after specifying these rewards, he adds that they were to give Twelve pence a day to the Scots till they Come to my brother king's high land. This ballad is written in a rough but vigorous style, and is of great length. There are several ballads in which a king is described as meeting with a plain-speaking individual, who is usually ignorant of the quality of the person with whom he is conversing; but this was not always so. The subject was a popular one, and the extremely long ballad of The King and Northernman, which was to be sung to the tune of Slut,' would have taken nearly an evening to sing it. The substance of it ran thus: A north-country lawyer who was the king's agent wanted to get possession of the countryman's farm, and pretended that the latter had forfeited his lease. The countryman tried to bribe him by the offer of forty shillings, and subsequently of five marks, but these the lawyer refused, and required him to give up his lease unconditionally, and trust to his kindness. The farmer declined on the ground that he had a wife and family. Acting on the advice of his neighbours, he put the rent in a sack, took his staff, and started for London. When he arrived there, he asked the way to Whitehall; but finding it was then too late to make a business-call on his majesty, he went to bed, to rest himself after the fatigues of his journey, but overslept himself, and to his great vexation was told, when he got to Whitehall, that the king had that morning gone to Windsor. He tells the porter very plainly that he suspects the king may have got an inkling of his presence in town, and what he had come about, and had gone to Windsor to get out of his way. From London he went to the latter place, and at the castle, Although the gates wide open stood, He laid on them till he made um crack, to the great astonishment of the royal porter, who wants to know what he means by making such a noise. He answers that he wants to see the king. The porter replies that his majesty has plenty of servants, and he must tell his business to one of them; but the countryman is much too sharp to do any thing of the kind; he has not come all the way from Northumberland to let somebody else do his business at last, and so he tells the porter, to whom he offers & bribe of a penny if he will let him in. The latter pretends he cannot resist so handsome an offer, and goes to a nobleman who is sunning himself in the like of whom has not been seen at court these seven court, and promises him good sport with a clown, the years. The noble orders him to be admitted, but the porter tells him he must leave his dog and stick at the gates. This he refuses to do, on the ground that he is not sufficiently acquainted with the kind of people who surrounded his majesty. Finally, he is introduced to the king, who is engaged in playing a game at bowls, and the weather being hot, he has taken off his coat, and the countryman seeing him so lightly clothed, imagines he has lost the rest at the game, and so, with a slight nod of the head and a beck with the knee, he says: 'If you be the king, As I can hardly think ye be, Heere is a gude fellow that brought me hither, Is liker to be the king than ye.' 'I am the king,' his grace now said; Then he tells how he was the king's tenant, and had was, on alighting at his inn, the barman gave him his pot of beer with an undue allowance of froth. Then he went for a walk, and got his pocket picked. After which he met two men, who declared they were his cousins, and when he expressed his doubts of their assertion, they affirmed that they were, at all events, from his country, and he must take a pot of beer with them. This he consented to do, and while they were drinking it, one of his new acquaintances pulled out 'I warrant thee thou hadst not forfeited thy lease, a pack of cards. The result I need not add. He If thou hadst feld five ashes mo.' To which his tenant replies: 'I, every one can warrant me; But all your warrants are not worth a flee, 'If I had thought the king had had so muckle gold, The first person he meets on reaching home is the lawyer or agent, who wants to know where he has been to, and on the other answering that he had been to the king to get him to settle their difficulty, he does not appear at all astonished that the king should have seen him, but merely exclaims: 'What a deel didst thou with the king? meets with sundry other deceptions; and quits London with a heavy heart, his last grief being, that his horse was almost starved, though he had to pay the landlord as if the animal had been on a full diet of beans. Of course, the poets did not fail to exercise their wit at the expense of the unfortunate wives. What a taking title this must have been to the village satirist, Halfe-a-dozen of Good Wives-all for a Penny. The tune, The Cleane Contrary Way. The rustic Henry, who details his experiences with his batch of wives, describes the first as cross and a gossip; the second, thrifty, so thrifty, that to save the cost of the salt, she would let the meat spoil, and when she went to market, always bought the cheapest, and gave him the worst part first; the result of this policy being that his appetite was thereby quenched, and the best parts had time to spoil, and had to be thrown away. The third was cleanly, and had good qualities, but she had one little failing; she invariably got tipsy on Mondays, and only recovered her sobriety strously frugal, and constantly looking after him to on the following Saturday. The fourth was monsee that he did not indulge in any luxury in which she did not participate. The fifth was a good soul, without a fault, old enough to be his grandmother, Could not neighbours and friends agree thee and but he was not happy even with her, for he says: me?' The agent is forced to comply with the king's order, and the ballad concludes: 'Yet if I chanced to kisse, Or on a young wench lookt, You would not think, poore harmlesse soule, The sixth excelled in scolding all the wives that If I were now a batchelor, Would every lawyer were served thus, From troubling poore men they would cease; They'd either shew him good cause why, Or else they'd let him live in peace. All the matrimonial complaints seem to come from Another very long performance is The Lamentable the husband. The Cruell Shrow, or the Patient Man's Ballad of the Tragical End of a Gallant Lord and a Woe, declaring the Misery and the Great Paine, by Vertuous Lady, with the untimely End of their Two his unquiet Wife he doth dayley sustaine, results in Children, wickedly performed by a Heathenish Blacka-aggravating him into declaring: moor, their Servant, the like never heard of; and a very lamentable ballad it is, and founded on one of the tales in Il Decamerone. In great contrast to this, is a comic ballad, entitled John and Joan, or a Mad Couple well met. Loving each other very dearly, they vowed to consult each other's tastes in everything, and the result was rather singular. If he was out of temper and blustered, then she blustered too. If he didn't like this, and cuffed her, she cuffed again. If he were pleased, so was she; but if he were vexed, and kicked his dog, she immediately kicked her cat. If John broke a pipkin, Joan broke a pot. If John feasted, so did Joan; and if he sulked over his victuals, she abstained from eating too; but, as the writer remarks, there was no great harm in this, since they saved their meat. And so it goes on, till they find a change advisable, when John appeals to her thus: 'Henceforth, let's doe in goodnesse, As we have done in ill; I'll doe my best, Do thou the rest.' 'A match,' quoth Joan; 'I will.' In modes of cheating, as in a vast number of other things, how little novelty there is in the processes employed. Here is an ancient ballad describing what happened to a rustic who visited the metropolis. It is headed, The Countriman's Bill of Charges for Com According to his account, she indulged in all sorts of In putting on her brave atyre, Whilst I wurke hard in durt and mire, The consequence of his intruding upon her when She takes up a cudgel's end, And breaks my head full sore, When judge all men that here doe stand, ming up to London. The first wrong he complains of If a friend calls to drink a pot of beer, she is sure to pick a quarrel with him. When he sits at meat on holidays, she is sulky and pouts, and This is the weary life That I doe leade, poore harmlesse man, Singularly enough, while she will not suffer him to accompany her abroad on her visits, she invariably follows him when he goes out to do business, and 'with her most wicked tongue' she involves him in endless difficulties, till he is driven to exclaim, with what looks like selfishness: O that some harmlesse, honest man, His sorrowes for to end, Would change with me to rid my care, His expectations of such an event happening are not sanguine, and he concludes his long and piteous narrative : Take warninge, all men, by the life That I sustained long, Be careful how you'll choose a wife, This was printed by M. P. for Henry Gosson, on The following specimen is one of a kind which was exceedingly popular in the rural districts before the introduction of railways and the rubbish termed Ethiopian songs. It reads dolefully enough; but to thoroughly appreciate its excellence in this respect, it should be heard at a village harvest-home, sung by one of mature age, when he has drunk a sufficient quantity of home-brewed to carry his mind back to the days of his youth. The title of this is The Complaint of a Lover forsaken of his Love, sung to a pleasant new tune: A poore soule sat sighing by a sicamore tree, His hand on his bosom, his head on his knee, O willow, willow, willow, Sing o' the greene willow shall be my garland. There are several verses in this style, but it will be sufficient if I give the last one: Farewel faire, falsehearted, plaints end with my breath, O willow, willow, willow, Thou dost loth me; I love thee, though cause of my death, O willow, willow, willow. Another once popular class of ballads relate the exploits of beggars, whose persistency was equal to that of their successors in Belgravia or Westbournia. Take, as an example of this class, The Stout Cripple of Cornwall; wherein is shewed his dissolute Life and deserved Death. This stout cripple had wooden legs, and his home was in a hollow tree by the roadside. During the day, he dozed and begged alternately, and at night he went on the highway, but nobody ever suspected a man of being a highwayman who, it was evident, had not a leg to stand upon. Once hearing that Lord Courtney was to pass along the road with a large sum of money, he got together a number of vagabonds to rob him; but the baron was too well supported, and the stout cripple got the worst of it. He masked his legs on these occasions with a long canvas smock-frock. He continued this career till Nine hundred pounds this cripple had got But as he strived his mind to fulfil In following his actions so lewd and so ill, Another of this class relates his knaveries, but he combines prudence with the exercise of his profession, and avers that 'Tis better be a begger, And aske of kind goode fellowes, What we doe crave, Than steale, and goe to the gallowes. As a contrast to the preceding, there are broadsheets filled with moral lessons, or Bible narratives in verse, and with the mention of the title of one of these, A Hundred Godly Lessons bequeathed by a Dying Mother to her Daughter, I conclude this notice of a species of literary composition which, according to an oft-quoted statesman, once exercised the most prodigious influence over the nation. THE WRECK OF THE ORPHEUS. ALL day, amid the masts and shrouds, They hung above the wave; The sky o'erhead was dark with clouds, Breaking with heavy crash, And when some slack'ning hands gave way, Captain and men ne'er thought to swerve; The boats went to and fro; With cheery face and tranquil nerve, Each saw his brother go. Each saw his brother go, and knew, The saved stood on the steamer's deck, Their comrades clinging to the wreck And still they gazed into the dark, Till, on their startled ears, There came from that swift-sinking bark Again, and yet again it rose; Then silence round them fell- No cry of anguish, no wild shriek No dropping down of watchers weak, But death met with three British cheers- For us the choking, blinding tears- O England, while thy sailor-host All communications to be addressed to The Editors of Chambers's Journal, 47 Paternoster Row, London,' accompanied by postage-stamps, as the return of rejected contributions cannot otherwise be guaranteed. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by all Booksellers. A HOUSE OF ONE'S OWN. WE that is to say, myself, my wife, and one, two, three, four, and so on, little children, who have made their appearance like this Journal (only without a cover) at periodical intervals—have had great experience in life, under all sorts of roofs. We have not, indeed, dwelt in tents, nor realised the dream of my youth, by occupying a house on wheels, but with those exceptions, we have tried every kind of domicile. We have lived in lodgings, in flats, in furnished houses, and in a house of our own-on lease. As to Lodgings, 'Don't speak of them,' says my wife with a shudder; and indeed the History of Domestic Imposition must be undertaken by some abler hand. When it is so, I shall be happy to supply one fact, culled from a sea-side lodging-house only last summer. In the first week, we were represented to have burned sixteen pounds of candles; daylight lasting till 8.30, and lamps alone being used in the drawing-room, which were made to consume plenty of oil upon their own account. Why, if we were a Russian family, ma'am,' expostulated I, 'and ate candles, we could scarcely have got through a greater amount of "composition." The landlady murmured something about a night-light in the nursery [damages one farthing, according to the advertisement of night-lights], and then went off into an elaborate apology for the item twopence-halfpenny for soda, which, she owned, was more than might have been expected. I possess that woman's bill, for the satisfaction of the curious. I repeat, however, that I am not going to reveal the awful mysteries of life in lodgings; I will merely say, without wishing to brand a considerable portion of my fellow-creatures, and those principally of the softer sex, with an accusation of dishonesty, that the letting of furnished apartments, and the dealing in horse-flesh, and the keeping of billiard-tables, and the profession of attorney-at-law, are callings which seem to demand of those who follow them an amount of integrity of which there is but a very insufficient supply. And I hope I have made my meaning clear without offence. When we had had enough of Lodgings, and a little to spare, a certain friend of ours, who is one of the most liberal and generous beings I know for giving advice-even to the length of offering it when it is not wanted-persuaded us into a First Flat, at that 6 PRICE 1d. time, quite a novelty in London lodging arrangements. It possessed all the advantages of a house, he urged, without the expense; it was compact, it was convenient, it was a number of eulogistic adjectives; but above all, it was quite the fashion, a remark which decided my wife, who, as usual, decided me. Our entrance-day was an exceedingly proud one, but was not without its drawbacks. Our perambulator-for we were carriage-people' to that limited extent-got smashed by the great swing-door, which bangs and thunders at the will of four different families, their visitors, trades-people, and tax-collectors. It also shut out our eldest little boy, aged seven years, by its own weight, and left him in tears outside, being unable, even on tiptoe, to reach the first-flat bellhandle, although he did make the ground-floor inhabitants quite sensible of his calamity. My wife, too, in a lavender silk, met a chimney-sweeper at the turning of the stairs, and for once regretted that she wore crinoline. There was, however, a good deal of truth in what the man observed in extenuationnamely, that he believed the stair was a Common Stair, and that he had just four times as much business upon it as we had, insomuch as he swept the chimneys of all four flats. I remarked with tartness, that for the future I would take care he should only sweep three of them; to which he replied that I didn't know what I was talking about; wherein, as it subsequently turned out, he was quite right. Though the institution of common stairs is doubtless very admirable in many respects, it certainly has its disadvantages. People did not confine themselves to coming up and going down our stair by any means; they used it as a shelter from the rain, as a place peculiarly adapted for the practice of singing, and as a retired spot suitable to the interchange of love-passages. They played at marbles on its landings, they smoked upon it the most revolting kinds of tobacco, and they dropped large hummocks of coal and little blobs of milk on every step, which drove our Mary, who had to clean it every day, to use expressions which were certainly not so polished as her fire-irons. Being First Flats, too, everybody defiled our stair, while we had no excuse for going up higher, to pay out our less aristocratic neighbours. Once inside, however, nothing could exceed the compactness of our residence. It is true that the Entrance Hall, or, as it is less elegantly termed, the Lobby, was all day long in twilight, and could not |