than any thing of the kind elsewhere. Is not this a striking instance of the insufficiency of the most exquisite natural capacities alone to ensure the progress, or even prevent the entire decay of art, when it is deprived of its due character, and pursued in a spirit which degrades it?

This flight to the other side of the Alps is not, as it may seem, a very wide digression from the tenor of our way, which first led us to the uses and prospects of Music in our own islands. If we find that nothing but a pure regard and a clear sense of its essence, can preserve the growth and beauty of Art, in its very birth-place, we may surely learn something from hence of the only manner in which we can hope to domesticate it as a living and beneficent influence, in a land from which it has been so long banished, and where it only exists by a kind of precarious and contemptuous sufferance. The "duty and advantage" of making the free gift of music our own, are far too general, that we should permit it to be engrossed by any section of a party, when hoping to see it rescued from the office of merely tickling the ear of a luxurious class. What we desire is a general catholic cultivation of a serene and purifying art, loved because music is a lovely and excellent thing, the study and practice of which, for its own sake, is gracious both in the innocent pleasure it gives, and in the influence it unconsciously exercises; loved, because it should be the welcome companion of social or solitary hours, the becoming accomplishment of the wellborn, the blessed recreation of the humble, a thing altogether too universal and copious a blessing to

in a still higher mood, is no less certain; and this sense of devout consecration has breathed on the works of some earlier artists a spirit of purity and solemn loveliness that has never been effaced or equalled since. But it may be at once admitted, that there may be a very rich development, for a season, in a genial soil, of art, which has no such elevated principle. This, however, we may observe, has never yet been witnessed, but in the fresh youth of a highly endowed race, under a happy climate; when the enthusiastic rapture that the discovery of a new vein of beauty awakens, has given to its pursuit a kind of eager devotion, like that of the lover to his mistress, which, during its heyday, exercises the elevating influence of love on all whom it touches. The passion is vehement, unconscious, brief in its duration, and fugitive in its effects, if not supported by a clearer insight, and a calmer devotion. Still it is a worship and a sacrifice; and while the emotion preserves its warmth, seeks to raise rather than degrade its object. But there is no instance of even the happiest organization having prolonged this kind of summer of the arts, in any country, beyond the date of its first enthusiastic period. The instinctive rapture of a passionate and sensitive race may, while it lasts, advance them to a fulness and glory of which less favoured nations are incapable: but this excitement alone will not preserve their excellence, or continue their production by even the highest natural endowments. When the bloom of this passion wanes, and there is no placid and respectful | feeling of the true objects of art to replace its impulses, the descent is as rapid as its rise was sudden. | be packed up in a disinterred pyx, or restrained to In proof of this, we need only look at the miserable state, at the present moment, of music and painting in Italy. The national organization is as fine as ever; the desire to excel, and the reward of success are still there, yet what is the testimony of all who visit that land? It still produces the richest voices, the most perfect individual musicians but its music is sunk into the lowest state of sensual decrepitude. The great schools of church composition are extinct,-in Mozart's time, indeed, they were already rapidly decaying. Instrumental works are things unknown. The cathedral audiences listen to airs from flimsy operas, massacred by an organist, who barely knows the common rudiments of his noble charge. Even Opera, the once favourite object of a voluptuous taste, grows more and more tuneless and vapid in each new hand. While there is hardly a corner of Europe where you may not hear the best Italian compositions of a better day, you seek in vain to enjoy them in Italy; where, indeed, the only music to be heard at all, is, by the testimony of all competent judges, worse by many degrees

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the canticles of any "Anglican" sect of surpliceworshippers. Let them sing as well in tune as Mr. Hullah can get them to learn to do; but do not let him, or any one else who professes a love for the art he teaches, and would raise, sadly neglected as it is in this kingdom, do it the fatal injury of making it exclusive, or laming its progress by tying it to the ceremonial of a fastidious party of professors, whether of church discipline, or of any other ism whatever. The light of nature's free gifts is not to be kept from the world by screening it for the use of those who like to sit behind stained glasses; but was given to enliven all, like the universal air and sunshine; and, as its "quality is not strained," so should its cultivation be liberal and open. In the pursuit of the art of Music especially, we are still so far behind the rest of Europe, that it may well grieve us to see any thing that once promised to render its study and practice more popular, breaking off into bye-ways, and meddling with fopperies quite foreign to its natural free disposition.

ANSWER TO PROTEST AGAINST THE BALLOT.
[See Wordsworth's Poems, vol. v. p. 391.]

If thou hadst seen the miscall'd freeman driven,
Intimidated, to deny his right,

And by his act increase Oppression's might;
Or forfeit else the barren pittance given
For heavy toil from hard-work'd sinews riven;
Thus robb'd by petty power of that high meed,
Felt deep within by him who acts a deed

Approved by Conscience, the stern will of Heaven;
Then wouldst thou say, great poet, that this plan
Was sure devised in purest love of truth,
Not of Pandora but Minervian,

In Virtue's cause still to preserve our youth;
Then wouldst thou speak for it with powerful voice,
And at its coming bid our land rejoice.

F. W. H.

493

THE GERMAN LAD. A BALLAD.

HE gemm'd with buds his lady's vase,
He fed her favourite turtle-dove,
But clouded was his once bright gaze;
For ah, he dared not tell his love;
And therefore were the spirits sad,
Of that young lovely German lad.

His lady comes, the chaste, the fair,

"Go search, my gentle page, each bow'r,
(She cries,) and bring to deck my hair,

The rarest, the most hidden flow'r,
And as a boon for this behest,
I'll give, whate'er thou shalt request."
With bliss too ardent to be told,

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The boy's possess'd. "For ah," saith he,
My mistress cares for me. Behold,
She saith, I'll give whate'er it be:

I'll do her will, and then demand,
As the dear boon, her heart and hand.

"The rarest flow'r-full well I know

Where that same flow'ret may be found,
High on a rock, I've seen one grow,

That hangs mid-way 'twixt sky and ground:
I'll scale it, and the blossoms give
To her for whom alone I live."

Away he bounds; his step disdains

The earth; hope gives him pinions, and
The precipice at length he gains,

And breathless 'fore its base doth stand;
Then with a pray'r to Mercy's fount,
The eagle-hearted youth doth mount.
Up mounts he-all for lore he dares,

The purple flow'r he plucks, and fleet
As the young mountain roe, prepares
To plunge the depths beneath his feet;
Poising his well-knit form, before
He leaps the yawning chasm o'er.
The leap is ta'en: but wo alack,

The ledge on which he 'lights gives way,
Down the abyss he falleth back,

Death's icy bolt no power can stay;
His body 'neath the white cliffs steep
Lies stark-his soul the angels keep.

Thus perish'd he; and though none know
Or guess his fate, yet Nature 's kind,
And mourns him oft, when drear blasts blow,
And through the fire-grove sweeps the wind;
The salt-sea too a requiem sad,
Wails to the lovely German lad.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

(Continued from page 432 of our July number.)

G. A.

thing more natural than that, when there were two brothers to divide the world between them, the one should put the other to death. Probably the old marquis argued from his own temper and disposition; an interpretation one would not put on his reasoning, if, instead of founding on an abstract view of human nature, he had argued from facts, and inferred that a person who has

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country, is in good training for countenancing them in another. The young lady who reads many romances, where beautiful women terribly ill used by old and ugly men, has derived from literature no idea of a lovely murderess; and would be still less able to fill the picture from her own circle of acquaintance, none of whom, she feels morally convinced, could, however disagreeable and conceited they may be, be induced to murder their husbands. But the Causes Celebres tell another story.

It is not right, that, even in reviewing a guilty age, | Mirabeau the elder thought there could be nowe should believe in charges of gross crime, on the slightest rumour of evidence; but a knowledge of the social condition in which the actors lived, smooths the way to an opinion, when there is otherwise a considerable body of evidence. It would not be fair to believe of Cæsar Borgia, that it was by his deed that his brother John was murdered, and thrown into the Tiber, without some evidence; but as Cæsar headed a band of cut-been brought up in the midst of murders in one throats and poisoners, much less evidence would satisfy the historian of his guilt, than would be necessary to prove that Charles I. poisoned his brother Henry. The court of France, where Mary lived during the period of life when the notions of right and wrong are formed, was conspicuous for poisonings, and other secret assassinations. The charge of murder was of course frequently made without foundation; but one accustomed to hear of it as the natural means of revenging an injury, or removing a troublesome neighbour, would not acquire a wholesome horror of such deeds. Her own husband Francis was said to have been killed by a barber shaving him with a poisoned razor. That great tragedy of national perfidy and crime, the Bartholomew massacre, was a subsequent fruit of the morality in which she had been trained; and indeed her own immediate maternal relations were among the most active perpetrators of its horrors. Such being the nature of the people from among whom she came, is it likely that she would be purified by contact with the Ruthvens, Mortons, Darnleys, and Bothwells, among whom her lot was cast in Scotland? We get over many historical difficulties, by reflecting on what things may, and what things may not be expected, of persons in this or that position.

VOL. XIII.-NO. CLII.

It is clear that if, before the murder of Rizzio, Mary despised Darnley, after that cruel tragedy she qualified her contempt with a cordial hatred. Accomplished, gifted, ardent, and exacting, she was not of the nature calmly to brook slights and insults from one whom her foolish fondness for his handsome person had raised to such a pinnacle of greatness. Darnley was a fool, and a paltry guzzling dissipated fool. He drank deep and continuously; kept low company of every kind and grade; and showed his queenly wife too plainly that constancy to one object was too dear a price to pay for her smiles. He was a sort of royal Tony Lumpkin, who could not brook the restraints and etiquettes of a court, and must always be grubbing among the lowest and most degrading

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Meanwhile another and a darker figure comes across the stage; one with a conscience no less stained with guilt, but with a stronger head and a firmer heart. We never saw a portrait of Bothwell. Probably it might disappoint our imagination, and we are content in the possession of the ideal image. To us he seems the most perfect historical personation of the ruffian of romance. We see him with a majestic gloomy brow, a swarthy complexion, dark fierce eyes, and lips expressive alike of treachery, sensuality, cruelty, and firmness. The incidents of his history are singular - boldly grasping at a crown--breaking down all the social and moral laws to attain his purpose, and dragging others through the gap-defying and intimidating the banded nobility of his countrystanding fiercely at bay; and, finally, when pursued, faithful still to his career of wickedness, and dying as a pirate in the northern seas: Such a picture of wickedness and courage-of successful villany and fatal overthrow, is surely nowhere else exemplified in general history. Mary acknowledged the influence of this greater spirit ;-what a contrast to the paltry creature she was bound to call husband! Courage and firmness have ever exercised the strongest influence over the female heart; and, between two bad men, he who was both bold and bad could not but prevail.

It was a

The

enjoyments. The murder of Rizzio was attended | contentment," as Lord Scrope writes to Cecil, and with circumstances of the deepest insult. If there then galloped back as she had come. be no reason to presume that the queen had a spirited act, and worthy of a better cause. criminal intercourse with the Italian, there can be whole journey, amounting to nearly fifty miles, no doubt that her husband charged her with it, over bog and moor and mountain-steeps, lay through publicly and with blunt coarseness. Was a high- that district where no post-chaise had been seen spirited woman to submit to this? She told the in Scott's childhood-the land of wild freebooters, perpetrators it would be dear blood to some of who would have as handily carried off her them. Did she exclude Darnley from the denun- sovereign majesty, and ensconced her in one of ciation? their peel towers, a general hostage for the safety of unnumbered offenders against the law, as they afterwards kidnapped the Lord President of the Court of Session, while walking on the sands of Leith, endeavouring to solve some knotty question of law on which he was called to give judgment. "She did not," says Bishop Keith, "think her person in security in the midst of so many loose vagabonds, who might easily have conveyed her into England in a few hours." The result was a burning fever, whether occasioned by her exertions, or by the state of mind which tempted her to undertake such an escapade, or by both. The apologetic narrator tells us that Mary wanted to know, from the very best source, the real state of the southern districts of her dominions; that business was the sole end and motive of the journey, and that she expected to receive from Bothwell such information as no one else could provide her with. Had he been able to give her any secret information about the Guises, or Philip of Spain,-to impart to her news from the councilchamber of Elizabeth,-or to tell any of those secrets from other courts, which sovereigns love to hear and keep to themselves, we might imagine a considerable effort made for a personal interview. But that this wild ride, with all its dangers, should have been encountered for the sake of a personal knowledge about outbreaks with which it was the part of the justiciar and the hangman to deal, - that no person among her zealous courtiers or grave councillors could procure the necessary information on these vulgar matters connected with the administration of justice, and "the state of the country,"-we cannot believe. No, no. Wisdom shakes her head. Princes, in that age especially, were not so anxious to undertake the grubbing labours of "the business of the country." In truth, it was an incident that, standing by itself, would have been inexplicable: connected with subsequent events, it stands forth in light all too clear and damnatory.

A circumstance occurred soon after Rizzio's murder, which, in spite of all that Prince Labanoff and others have done to give it a different interpretation, must go down to all posterity as an undoubted indication of the depth of the queen's criminal attachment to Bothwell. On the 7th of October, 1766, he was severely wounded in a conflict with the border thieves; so severely that the reports of Queen Elizabeth's spies, in Scotland, announced his death. Next day the queen arrived at Jedburgh, and opened the sessions of the Court of Justiciary. Her proceeding to this distant town, where she was in the middle of a wild turbulent people, and unattended by the amenities and enjoyments of her court, on which she so much depended, is, by itself, a singular circumstance; but, at a period when news travelled so slowly, it would scarcely be just to connect this journey with the circumstance of Bothwell having been wounded on the preceding day. A few days subsequently, however, she took horse, with a few attendants, crossed the wild border country, and visited Bothwell on his sick-bed. The incident was strange enough to leave an enduring recollection in the traditions of the borderers, of the localities connected with the queen's wild ride. She remained two hours at his stronghold, the castle of Hermitage, "to Bothwell's great pleasure and

The Queen's illness was frightful and miserable. Her exclamation, that she wished herself dead, and the other strange thoughts disturbing her mind, were marked by those around her, and treasured up with the other records of her wayward fate. Meanwhile there were not wanting tempters to put vile thoughts in her mind. Darnley, who was isolated and slighted-perhaps afraid, proposed to leave the country; but this project was not executed. A divorce was next proposed; and why it was not adopted is not perfectly clear, unless through the supposition that the principal conspirators thought it a stupid and clumsy expedient, and remembered the robbers' proverb, mortui non mordent. Secretary Maitland,