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In a consummate Paradise within

The Veil,-O Lord, upon my soul bestow,

An earnest of that purity here below.

From all these quotations it will be seen that David Gray was really an extraordinary young man. As in the cases of Thomson and Keats, he charms the ear by a most awakening and quickening power of melody. It would seem that he thought himself likely to equal or eclipse Wordsworth in fame. But there is little that indicates a probable power to make the precious things of nature give up their moral treasures, as in all the poems of the great seer of the English mountains. The versification of Gray, and the tone of his thought, was sensuous. He led along his measures and his images frequently in a maze and dance of verbal witchery-defect some may regard it, ripeness and maturity others; but his poems do not evidence of purpose and object: his sentiments, and the flow of his expressions, have the ease, and grace, and happiness of unconditioned nature.

That impulse which all beauty gives the soul

Is languaged as I sing.

His powers lack that which crowns and glorifies powerconsecration. His mind had much of his favourite river in its flow. It was not so much an enduring crag to receive impressions, as a spring to gush forth upon a wandering and abounding way. And we speak thus of his mind, not merely because death has set the seal upon all performance, as because the writings evidence a maturity, a pre-maturity, a rare roundness and finish of being. Is it sad to think of that early-filled grave in the “Auld Aisle Kirkyard”? For the survivors, yes. But do we not possess a faith which teaches the essential elevation of being by death? And we are permitted to hope that David Gray has at once. realized the purpose of his being here at all, and, amidst beauties to which all the enchantments of the Luggie are tame, is now fulfilling the glorious purpose of existence more immediately in the presence of God.

CHAPTER XIX.

INDUSTRY AND SONG.

HE poetry in honour of real labour is very scarce; the songs of the people, if they have expressed

the sentiments of the people, have yet expressed very bad sentiments. Genius has been employed to decorate the achievements of Sin; and the voices of melody have hymned the praises of the sword, the cannon, the battlefield; very few of the occupations of industry have been duly appreciated, yet what more natural than that the various employments of men should be lauded and praised by those who have battled and vanquished in the great labour and battle of life? The present time, however, the age in which we live, is remarkable for the songs from the most eminent pens consecrating every variety of labour; and indeed there is no pursuit that is not poetical, none that is not covered and shone upon by the lights of human association, every trade, every pursuit, every habitation is invested with poetry; the heroisms of daily life are as worthy of song as many of the martyrdoms of the Book of the Saints, or the daring deed of the dim heroes of early ages. To sing while working appears to be the true method of life; to front the forge or the loom, not in the spirit of fastidiousness or cowardice, but in true, brave, cheerful right-heartedness: Song is the halo that consecrates industry. There is no more pleasant sound in all creation than that of the labourer singing at his work: how is it that we have not in England the breath of melody to fan

the enfeebled pulses of the labourer, over fields and workshops, through mines and factories? The songs usually sung are either coarse, licentious, or meaningless. England has but little national song worthy of the name: song that penetrates every avenue of the heart; song thrilling every chord of the spirit; song stirring up old memories and associations, bringing back upon the enlinked chains of harmony old words, familiarizing the mind with old legends and traditions, and the historic life of other days in the land; song awakening within the spirit every happy, holy, human emotion, not a homily, not a sermon, not logic, not sentimental, but high, chaste, rousing, genuine, noble song; it is an everlasting remembrancer and incentive to pure deeds and recollections. A nation wanting in good song is wanting in much by which a nation preserves its moral breath pure and healthy; and we should think the loss of this feature most disastrous in a land like England, were it not supplied by a flood of religious melody so soft, spiritual, and prophetic, that the world has known nothing like it since the days of the Hebrew seers.

Time was, perhaps, when the pursuits of the people were hallowed by the breath of song, when men were not apparently such care-worn, travel-stained beings they now appear to be. In the following eloquent words, Allan Cunningham truthfully describes the prevalence of Scottish song, and how universally it everywhere at one time spread its spell and its charm.

Song following the bride to the bridal chamber, and the corpse when folded in its winding-sheet,-the hag as she gratified her own malicious nature with an imaginary spell for her neighbour's harm, and her neighbour who sought to counteract it. Even the enemy of salvation solaced, according to a reverend authority, his conclave of witches with music and with verse. The soldier went to battle with songs and with shouts; the sailor, as he lifted his anchor for a foreign land, had his song also, and with song he welcomed again the reappearance of his native hills. Song seems to have been the

regular accompaniment of labour: the mariner dipped his oar to

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM ON SCOTTISH SONG. 381

its melody; the fisherman dropped his net into the water while chanting a rude lyric or rhyming invocation; the farmer sang while he consigned his grain to the ground; the maiden, when the corn fell as she moved her sickle; and the miller had also his welcoming song, when the meal gushed warm from the mill. In the south, I am not sure that song is much the companion of labour; but in the north there is no trade, however toilsome, which has banished this charming associate. It is heard among the rich in the parlour, and among the menials in the hall; the shepherd sings on his hill, the maiden as she milks her ewes ; the smith as he prepares his welding-heat, the weaver as he moves his shuttle from side to side; and the mason as he squares or sets the palace stone, sings to make labour appear lightsome, and the long day seem short. Even the West India slaves chant a prolonged and monotonous strain while they work for their taskmasters; and I am told they have a deep sense of sweet music, and no inconsiderable skill in measuring out words to correspond with it.

The current of song has not always been poured forth in an unceasing and continued stream. Like the rivulets of the north, which gush out into rivers during the season of rain, and subside and dry up to a few reluctant drops in the parching heat of summer, it has had its seasons of overflow and its period of decrease. Yet there have been invisible spirits at work, scattering over the land a regular succession of lyrics, more or less impressed with the original character of the people, the productions of random inspiration, expressing the feelings and the story of some wounded heart, or laughing out in the fullest enjoyment of the follies of man and the pleasant vanities of woman. From them, and from poets to whose voice the country has listened in joy, and whose names are conse. crated by the approbation of generations, many exquisite lyrics have been produced which find an echo in every heart, and are scattered wherever a British voice is heard, or a British foot imprinted. Wherever our sailors have borne our thunder, our soldiers our strength, and our merchants our enterprise, Scottish song has followed, and awakened a memory of the north land amid the hot sands of Egypt, and the frozen snows of Siberia. The lyric voice of Caledonia has penetrated from side to side of the Eastern regions of spice, and has gratified some of the simple hordes of roving Indians with a melody equalling or surpassing their own.

Amid the boundless forests and mighty lakes and rivers of the western world, the songs which gladdened the hills and vales of Scotland have been awakened again by a kindred people; and the hunter, as he dives into the wilderness, or sails down the Ohio, recalls his native hills in his retrospective strain. These are no idle suppositions which enthusiasm creates for natural vanity to repeat. For the banks of the Ganges, the Ohio, and the Amazon; for the forests of America, the plains of India, and the mountains of Peru or Mexico; for the remotest isles of the sea, the savage shores of the north, and the classic coasts of Asia or Greece, I could tell the same story which the Englishman told, who heard, two hundred years ago, the song of Bothwell Bank sung in the land of Palestine.

And (to take another quotation) who does not thrill while reading the following truly glowing words of Professor Wilson, describing the probable origin of Scottish Song?

The old nameless song-writers, buried centuries ago in kirkyards that have themselves perhaps ceased to exist—yet one sees sometimes lonesome burial-places among the hills, where man's dust continues to be deposited after the house of God has been removed elsewhere-the old nameless song-writers took hold out of their stored hearts of some single thought or remembrance, surpassingly sweet at the moment over all others, and instantly words as sweet had being, and breathed themselves forth along with some accordant melody of the still more olden time; or when musical and poetical genius happily met together, both alike passion-inspired, then was born another new tune or air, soon treasured within a thousand maidens' hearts, and soon flowing from lips that "murmured near the living brooks a music sweeter than their own.' Had boy or virgin faded away in untimely death, and the green mound that covered them, by the working of some secret power far within the heart, suddenly risen to fancy's eye, and then as suddenly sunk away into oblivion with all the wavering burial-place, then was framed dirge, hymn, elegy, that, long after the mourned and the mourner were forgotten, continued to wail and lament up and down all the vales of Scotland-for what vale is unvisited by such sorrow?—in one same monotonous melancholy air, varied only as each separate singer had her heart touched and her face

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