Bull were in England then, he was not in the habit of sitting for his picture. And do not smile at the term American Englishman; for the Englishman has not his name because he was born in England; but England was called England because the English race dwelt there. The name goes with the people. The first England was a small patch of ground south of the Baltic sea; the next was the larger and the fairer part of the white-cliffed isle; the new England lies between the two great oceans.

In one respect at least, we faithfully preserve a distinctive trait of our race. We have no national music. In this deficiency, the English are peculiar among all the people of the earth. There is no national English music; we brought none over here with us, and we have originated none since we left the old home. There are songs, indeed, which are called English ballads; and there are certain very correctly written glees, mostly dolorous in their character; and also, English church "services" or sacred music, by which, such words as "We praise thee" and "O, be joyful," can be sung in a sufficiently penitential manner. But all this has no distinctive character, except it be that character which forbids it to be called music by any other civilized people, or to be listened to with patience by those among ourselves who happen to have musical organizations and cultivated taste. It is true, that certain composers, on both sides of the water, have produced some fine music-a very little; but its character has plainly shown that it was merely the isolated upspringing of

German, Italian, or French seeds, cultivated in English soil. We have no school of music; nay, we have not even a good popular air that is of our own production. The very commonest ballads which have been long in favor, both in England and America, are not of English origin; they are Scotch or Irish, French or Italian. Of "Home, Sweet Home" itself, the sentiment of the words-written by an Americanis truly English, but the melody is Italian. And the very "Annie Laurie," which was sung so much in the Crimea, is Scotch.

This lack of popular English melodies has been before remarked. Tom Moore, in the Preface to his "Popular National Airs," says:-"It is Cicero, I believe, who says 'naturâ ad modos ducimur,' and the abundance of wild, indigenous airs which almost every country, except England, possesses, sufficiently proves the truth of this assertion." This is true beyond denial. Among all other people, music cheers the toil of the husbandman; but no song goes up from fields tilled by the English race. We go to our work more seriously; nay, do we not, on whichever side of the Atlantic, keep up our wont of "taking our pleasure sadly," as a shrewd observer said we did four hundred years and more ago? It is not easy for us to break forth into song, whether at work or play, in peace or war. Taillefer, the Norman, who led the first charge upon the Englishmen at the battle of Hastings, singing Chanson de Roland as he rode, only got killed for his pains in attempting to force this outlandish fashion upon us at the sword's point, a fate

which has deterred any one from following his example.* As for his race, they beat us in that fight; but we had our revenge in swallowing up our victors. In spite of his lance and his coat of mail, the Norman soon disappeared from the soil of England. And now we go to battle in the same impassible silent way in which our ancestors went before us. Nay, when the Garibaldi Legion marched down Broadway to the

* An absurd practice has so long obtained, of calling the two par. ties to the battle of Hastings, Normans and Saxons, and of dividing the nation ruled by the conquerors into two people, distinguished by the same names, for two hundred and fifty years after, that the designation of the latter as Englishmen may excite some surprise. But England was called England more than a thousand years ago, by its own inhabitants, and by those of neighboring countries, because English men, so calling themselves, and so called by others, inhabited it. The Normans fought Englishmen at Hastings, not Saxons. See this passage quoted by Percy from the Roman de Vacce, referring to the very incident above mentioned at that battle :

"Quant ils virent Normanz venir

Mout reissiez Engleiz fremir, * **
Taillefer qui mout bien chantoit,
Sur un cheval, qui tost alloit
Devant euls aloit chantant

De Kallemaigne, et de Rollant,

Et d'Ollivier de Vassaux,

Qui moururent en Raincesvaux."

See also these lines from Wace's Roman de Rou, written about

1140-50.

The old romances are full of like evidence.

"Des Engleis furent rei toz treis,

E toz treis furent dus è reis

Reis de Engleterre par cunquie,

Et dus fure de Normendie."

war, with green sprigs in their hats, twirling their rifles in the air, and singing as they marched, did we not, while admiring, still feel a little shamefaced for them, as if they were guilty of some indecorum? which, nevertheless, after the assuming habit of our race, we graciously forgave them, because they were foreigners, and so did not know how to behave themselves "respectably."

It is beyond denial that there is no really English music, indigenous, "native and to the manner born, either in England or America. Of airs properly national, it should be remembered, the composers are not known. They are found existing among the people, who are ignorant of their origin. They are, to borrow a German phrase, folk-music.

This barrenness of popular melody is a reproach to us among the nations; and instead of admitting it candidly, we painfully go about to remove or evade it. On the other side of the water musical antiquaries gather together such faded and forlorn fag-ends of melody as they can find songs tacked to, and thus succeed only in establishing by auricular demonstration that we have been utterly unable to produce a popular air worth listening to.* Or they magnify the "solid and manly" style of Fairfax, Taverner, Shepherd, Bird, and all the other worthies so lauded and

*See, for instance, Chappell's "Collection of National English Airs," London, 1838; a work very creditable to the research of its author, but in which there is hardly an air more than a hundred and fifty years old, the frequent repetition of which would not make any real lover of music, except a Briton brimfull of prejudice, insane.

glorified by Master Thomas Morley in the dreary dialogues of "Practicall Musicke" which he holds with Polymathes and Philomathes, and which Humfrey Lownes imprinted for him at London in 1608. Or they sanctify themselves in the ecclesiastical style of Tallis and Boyce, Locke and Blow, on hearing or reading whose "learned" compositions, we wonder whether they were written by single or double entry, or were worked out upon the binomial theorem.*

In this country some of us being asked for our national melodies, reply, it seems, by referring our querists to the negro melodies!† They might as well fasten upon us the songs of the Chinese coolies in California, or the war-whoops of the Cherokee Indians, as our national melodies. These are no more to us as a people, or even as a nation, because they are

* Henry Purcell, it is true, had some semblance of musical inspiration. But even he wrote not a single air which is remembered and sung out of England. The prophets of English music, unlike all others, have their honor in their own country. It may be worth while to add here, that an English critic has remarked that "in all single songs [i.e. airs] till those of Purcell appeared, the principal effects were produced from the words, not the melody; for the English airs antecedent to Purcell's time [he composed 1682-1695] were as misshapen as if they had been composed of notes scattered about by chance, instead of being cast in a regular mould." The same writer adds, "had his short life been protracted, we might, perhaps, have had a school of secular music of our own which we cannot to this day boast of." And since that day, with the exception of a clever composition or two by Dr. Arne and Sir Henry Bishop, we have been wise enough to let the Italians, Germans, and French write music for us.

"When a foreigner asks and inquires about national melodies, he is unanimously (?) directed to hear the so-called negro melodies."— Gurowski's America and Europe, p. 179.