The warden paces all night long, Thus has Adelaide Anna Procter rendered with consummate art this incident of the Swiss invasion. A benediction or prayer is part of the cry in many country districts of the Tyrol. From that most quaint little collection of Samuel Rowland's, entitled, "The Common Calles, Cries, and Sounds of the Bellman" (1639), I quote some of the following. The sub-title of the collection is "Or, Divers Verses to put us in Minde of our Mortality, which Serve as Warnings to be Prepared at all Times for the Day of Death." Thus the solemnity which characterizes these sounds will not be wondered at. Here, for instance, is a warning which must have seemed most impressive in the receptive hour of dawn: All you that in bed doe lye, Leave off your sins, repentance crave; Thy selfe and servants more and lesse, This day must let all labor passe. For certain days of the week the bellman had certain verses: FOR SUNDAY. Let labor passe, let prayer be, This day the chiefest worke for thee; FOR GOOD FRIDAY. All you that now in bed do lie, Would make us weep, lament, and mourn. A very extraordinary sound woke up the good people on St. David's Day. It began: I am no Welchman, but yet to show The First of March is Saint David's Day. New Year, Christmas, Day, and many others had all special sounds. That for the 1st of January ran: All you that doe the bel-man heere Finally, I quote one which seems to incorporate the whole relations of bellman and sleepers: Sicke men complaine, they cannot sleepe, The belman such a noise doth keepe; Others that doe well at play, Sayes he too soone proclaims the day. It puts them in the mind of death. One of the most tragic of bellman's songs was that of the parish of St. Sepulchre's, where the practice was on the eve of an execution for the bellman to go under the window of the condemned cell at Newgate, to ring his bell, and to repeat these verses: All you that in the condemn'd hold do lie Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die. Watch all and pray; the hour is drawing near, That you before the Almighty must appear. Examine well yourselves, in time repent, That you may not to eternal flames be sent. And when St. Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls, The Lord have mercy on your souls! According to a note in Stowe's "Survey of London” (1618), the repetition of the verse should be by a clergyman, one Robert Done, citizen and merchant tailor of London, having given to the parish of St. Sepulchre the sum of £50 for that purpose. The beadle of Merchant Taylors' Hall had a similar stipend, to see that it was duly done. Rather quaint is this city bellman's song: Maides to bed and cover coale, The church-bells used to serve the purposes of clocks before the latter became common. In 1536 the Corporation of Shrewsbury made an order for the payment of the clerk of St. Alkmunds for ringing the watch-bell at 4 A.M., so that the watchmen might know their duties were over. Amongst the Volkslieder of the German Fatherland, there are numerous specimens of watchmen's songs, which, like many others of the songs of the people, have been solely preserved by oral transmission. Contrasted with the more modern watchmen's songs, these old German lieder seem to us most elaborate; but it must be remembered that time was of less value in the romantic Middle Ages than it is in this prosaic and most cursory nineteenth century. I have only been able to give a few verses out of each of these songs, which are calculated by their length "to last out a night in Russia." It At the beginning of this century the watchmen at Herrnhuth, an old German town, used to intimate the hour in There is a the following quaint lines. simple piety and vividness of diction about some of the verses which appeal very strongly to the imagination. is, in truth, an epitome of the Christian's duty, and a supplication which it would be difficult to forget. The sixth verse is impregnated with brief humor, doubtless the good Wächter, like other servants, was not sorry to see his term of office expire, and having done as much as he could for the souls of his sleeping fellow-citizens, he feels he may safely commit them to their own guardianship during their waking hours. VIII. Past eight o'clock! O, Herrnhuth, do thou ponder, Eight souls in Noah's ark were living yonder? IX. 'Tis nine o'clock! Ye brethren, hear it striking? Keep hearts and houses clean, to our Saviour's liking. X. Now, brethren, hear the clock is ten and passing, Now rest but such as wait for Christ embracing. XI. Eleven is past! Still at his hour eleven, The Lord is calling us from earth to heaven. The following is an interesting speci men of the watchmen's songs in use in Germany at the present day: Hört ihr, herren, und lasst euch sagen, Lobt Gott den Herrn. (Translation.) Listen, gentlemen, hear me tell, It is interesting to compare with this Longfellow's "Song of the Curfew," with its injunction: Cover the embers And put out the lights. Toil comes with the morning, A physician travelling in Switzerland some years ago thus alludes to the songs of the watchmen who disturbed his nocturnal slumbers at Chur, a town in the canton of the Grisons: "We had very indifferent rest in our inn, owing to the over-zeal of the Chur watchmen, whose practice it is to perambulate the town through the whole night-twelve in number-and who, on the present occasion, certainly displayed a most energetic state of vigilance. They not only called, but sang out every hour in the most sonorous strains, and even sang a long string of verses on the striking of some. The song which follows is a very good specimen of these nightly lyrics, which are of ancient origin, and have their counterparts in various parts of Germany." WATCH CHANT AT CHUR. Only eleven disciples were faithful, Get up in the name of the Lord Jesus For the day has appeared. The towns of Neuchatel and Zurich used to have their choral watchmen, but, like many other ancient and interesting features and relics, these have passed away with the legions of the bygones. The following stanza in the Swiss patois may occasionally be heard in the outlying districts of the Zurich canton: Now stand I on the evening watch. An interesting story accounts for the watch-cry dating from the fourteenth century, and still used in the old Rhine Grant Lord that there be no falling off. town of Stein. Both story and song Eleven! are hereditary oral possessions of the For time goes; And over the engraving: Praised be God! Our Lord, to whom people of Stein, who regard them as of one of the ancient watchmen; at the their most valued heirloom. When the top of the sheet are the lines:conflicts between the towns and the Watch and pray, feudal lords were raging, a plot to deliver Stein into the hands of neighboring nobles was made, several traitorous citizens entering into it. The gate of the city was to be opened to the enemy by them at 2 A.M., the watchword agreed upon being "Noch a Wyl" -"Yet a while." A shoemaker living near the gate overheard the whispered signal and the clatter of arms outside, and rushing to the watchhouse gave the alarm, and so saved the town. "Noch a Wyl" was adopted as the watchword of Stein, and ever since the watchman, as he calls the hour of two, chants "Noch a Wyl, Noch a Wyl." COPENHAGEN WATCHMAN'S SONG. When darkness blinds the earth, And the day declines, That Time then us reminds Of death's dark grave. Shine on us, Jesus sweet, At every step, To the grave-place, And grant a blissful death. FIVE O'CLOCK. O Jesu! Morning Star! Light up our house and home. The The following are the watch-calls at Seville and Malaga; similar ones are used by the watchmen in some parts of South America:— WATCH-CALL AT SEVILLE. A ve Ma-ri - a pu- ris - si- ma! In Chili the police consists of two distinct bodies, the one cavalry, the other on foot, and they fulfil the office of watchmen, carrying swords. The police patrol the streets in general, whilst the latter take charge of some particular portion of the city, for which they are responsible. A peculiar system exists in Valparaiso, by which a message may be sent through a watchman from one end of the town to the other, and an answer obtained within fifteen minutes. This is done by means of a loud and shrill whistle carried by the watchmen, the tones of which vary as occasion requires. When all is well the whistle runs as follows: When they cry the hour they all sing the same tune, but the pitch varies according to the voice: Viva Chili, Viva Chili, las diez anda y serena. In the morning the watchmen add the prayer: Ave Maria, purissima las cinco y media, the music in no way differing from that of the night-song. The "chowkeydar" on the frontier of Nepaul is an interesting personality; he perambulates the village at night, giving vent to loud cries or fierce howls, which are echoed by all the neighboring "chowkeydars." The cries are not all unmusical, and the watchman, who is a low caste man, is by no means unpicturesque, with his blue puggara or official badge, and his iron-bound staff. In many Oriental countries the watchman is still a necessity. Civilization has proved the Juggernaut of much that was artistic and picturesque in bygone days. With steam it has deadened the song of the sailor, the rhythmical chant of the ploughman and the wagoner; and with the policeman's rattle, the introduction of gas and electricity, the watchman and his quaint hour-songs have passed away. The streets of any great city 'twixt midnight and dawn are now full of life, and as light as day. The watchmen would find no work in these, for the nineteenth century pedestrian does not need to be told in sonorous tones:Two o'clock, a fine night, and all is well. LAURA ALEXANDRINE SMITH. for it would describe the passion so often found in kings and conquerors much better than bloodthirst. The latter exists, as we shall shortly show, but not often in kings, who, with scarcely an exception, possibly, indeed, with only one exception in history, have, when evil in that way, been animated rather by a passion for destructiveness than by true bloodthirst. The latter was probably upon Ivan the Terrible, when he indulged in his bloodbath at Novogorod, where sixty thousand free citizens are supposed to have fallen under his eyes; but the regular "bloodthirsty" prince is usually only a perfectly callous person who wishes to be finally rid of his enemies in the quickest and easiest way, or who believes that terror is the strongest instrument of government. Indifference to human life can become, and often does become, quite perfect, as when Tilly explained the horrors of the sack of Magdeburg as an indulgence to his soldiers, or when Napoleon, for the amusement of some mistress of a night, sacrificed fifty of his soldiers in an escalade which he knew to be positively futile for any military purpose. Nero probably felt no pleasure in the death of his victims, but only relief at their removal, and if Philip II. had been given to introspection he would have explained his own conduct in dooming the inhabitants of the Low Countries to death as a measure of policy justified by their rebellion and their heresies. If it is true that Charles IX. of France stood on his balcony during the massacre of St. Bartholomew shouting out "Kill! kill!" it is probable that the true bloodthirst had come upon him, the raging desire to take life as a relief to the burning hate within; but his mother, who planned the massacre, was probably free from any impulse of the kind. Her motive was anxiety for her children's dynastic safety, coupled, it may be, with dislike for men in whose religious separateness she had detected, what certainly existed, a deep trace of the revolutionary spirit. Whether in rulers like the French Terrorists there was not also some of the |