No. 27.]

OLD TUNES.

BY ELIZA COOK.

We love music dearly love it with a deep and fervent adoration that amounts, we suspect, to a "blind idolatry;" for though the warm impulses of our soul are ever ready to rush into sublime ecstasy at the sound of "Handel's Coronation Anthem," they betray an equal susceptibility at the jingling of "Fisher's Hornpipe" on a demi-piano, with which a little Italian boy occasionally Nay, we even plead narrow street. refreshes our guilty to being touched by the mouth-organ and drum that, time out of mind, have drowned the groans of the dying in the matrimonial battle-field of Punch and Judy. The reeds may be sharp and the sheepskin flat; but we have a happy knack of reconciling the difference by some mysterious tuning-fork of Benevolence in our auricular faculties, and often have we put on a dawdling pace and lingered on our errand in order to hear the conclusion of "favourite and popular air" played in this national style.

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clapping of hands in hysterical delight are rather without
the pale of "gentility." So we have discovered, to our
great satisfaction, that the drum and mouth-organ hold the
same primitive influence over the darlings of a duke as
over the plagues of a pauper. Thus, we flatter ourselves,
that ours is an orthodox taste and experience, nor blush
in confessing our partiality for the simple melodies of our
Lydian
We again declare that we love music dearly; from the
country, illustrated by our wandering minstrels.
"tum, tum," of the Ojibbeway Indians to the "
measure" poured forth by the gifted Lind; yet we have
a lurking affection for a peculiar order of harmony that
clings to us with religious strength, and despite our
general Apollonian free-thinking, we do homage at a
we render up to others. There is a character of music
certain style of melody with a fervour exceeding all that
which has an indisputable power to lead us by our long
ears into the very Charybdis of Enthusiasm; and what
think ye, gentle reader, may this character of music be?
mothers' fireside ditties. Yes, we instinctively worship
Why, it is our grandmothers' jig-tunes, and our grand-
the blithe triplets of " Sir Roger de Coverly," and vene-
rate the silvery sadness about "Crazy Jane."

Let us observe, that ours is not a solitary taste for There is something in the spirit of "olden tunes" that this particular species of instrumentation. It is our fortune now and then to breathe the perfumed air of Belgravia, and enjoy the society of certain juvenile hot- haunts our heart with sacred witchery. Be it in mirth, house plants, who have at their command golden strings or be it in melancholy, there is nothing operates so and ivory keys, with the fascinating services of Bochsa intensely on our nature as the melodies long familiar to and Moscheles; but we have been present, when, by us. Our feet never suffer so much from imposed restraint chance, the vulgar "Row-de-dow," and Pandean treble when a modern waltz or fashionable polka is played, as of uncertain cadence, ventured in that élite neighbour- when "The Campbells are Comin'," or "Haste to the hood. We only wish we could convey to our readers the Wedding," is struck up with tantalizing brilliancy. We Noble mammas may feel no thickness in the throat over the sentiment of "Casta Diva," as we do while the simple pathos of "Poor Mary Anne," actual scene that ever ensues. Ichide with dignified astonishment, governesses may endeavour to exert the authority of place, and aristocratic" John Anderson my Jo," or indifference to such "low noise" be insisted on-but in arrests our bosom. Yes! Goth-like as it may appear, we vain! We have seen the Hon. Master Adolphus in a confess our passion for all the vulgar, common-place state of quivering trepidation and nervous flutter from tunes extant, be they English, Irish, or Scotch. top to toe, and the Hon. Miss Emily a degree worse. We have seen them rush to the plate-glass windows with such rude "physical force" power, that we have trembled for the consequences, and there they have stood pressing their rounded cheeks, and snubbing their pretty little noses against the barrier panes with feverish anxiety and expectation, praying that the "music" may come before the house; and if it really and positively does approach with all the magic thereunto belonging, the jumping and

We believe we could dance with the gout to "St. Patrick's Day," and sing with the toothache if "We won't Roy's Wife," despite of her celebrity for jilting, we are go home till Morning" were chorused around us. As for ever ready to be off with her on her slightest whisper; and "We're a' Noddin" has kept us out of our bed "warbler" has volunteered it just as the chamber many an extra ten minutes, when some "little" or big candles were lighted.

When have we tripped so joyously through the "festive maze," as in the free and easy time of “Christmas jollity" after supper, when young and old, grave and gay, are enlisted "nolens volens" into "hands across, down the middle, and up again," while "Katty O'Lynch," "The Young May Moon," or "Speed the Plough," was inspiring our ecstatic antics; and then, shall we reveal our foolish emotions of plaintive sympathy awakened by the "Robin's Petition," or "Savourneen Dheelish," when a dreamy dimness has gathered before our eyes, until the very blaze of the cheerful fire has lost its distinctive form, and we have seen nothing but the poor starving little bird shivering in the snow-storm, and the exiled wanderer in his mournful solitude. Oh! we do love these old tunes and ditties, and hope we ever shall love them; and how many more are there in this hard-grinding world, who snatch glimpses of happiness from these antiquated sources. How the children of the poor will cluster round some ragged servitor of Apollo, who scrapes away at one of these "vulgar tunes," and how they involuntarily assume attitudes and steps of most animated though grotesque arrangement. These steps always appear to us the identical ones mentioned so often by philosophers, as being between the sublime and the ridiculous, yet we scarcely dare to smile at the approach of Ignorance to the altar of Spiritual Beauty, uncouth as the advance may be. Let them shuffle and twist, and sidle and jump, in their own uncivilized way, it is an opportunity for their getting nigher to God through the medium of an "old tune."

And would the mother do without these "old tunes" to hush her infant to rest, or arouse it into chuckling joy? Who ever heard a mother or nurse attempt to soothe her young one with a scientific bravura, or a ballad from the latest opera? Why, the thing is not to be imagined! No, it is the " old tunes," the quaint and ancient morsels of common melody, that are naturally uppermost on the nursery tongue, and pass from tion to generation with undiminished charms.

haps among the strongest links which hold us to the dead there is none stronger than the “old tune" which they liked to listen to or used to sing. What a gush of gentle sorrow will spring in the father's breast, when by chance he hears the self-same air that his fair girl learnt years ago, to please him. The child is missing in his home-her place is vacant-she is gone from his warm hearth-stone to the cold sepulchre, but the " old tune" lives on, and has the power to thrust the world and its allurements from his mind, to take him back to scenes of bygone happiness, and lead him onward to the future in hope and faith. The son never forgets the melody that his mother used to sing to him in his early years, simply and imperfectly as it might be rendered by her; yet he was gladdened and excited by it, and he will recognise it when his own hair is white, and his limbs tottering, with a tender respect, as the "old tune" which he loved when he was a boy. Oh! "old tunes" are blessed things; and come where and when they may, the one who is akin to heaven as well as earth will bow to their influence. Never let us be ashamed of finding ourselves laid hold of by "Tom Bowling" or "Black-eyed Susan.” Let us not deem it a weakness to detect our feet in an incipient vertigo, at the bidding of "Mrs. M'Leod" or "Nancy Dawson;" for we have little reverence for the man or woman who is never to be warped from the frigid proprieties of artificial existence, by the vulgar interference of "old tunes."

"THE WIDOW'S RETURN."

Or all the characteristics of that truly national word "comfort" with which England abounds, one of the most pleasing, if not the most prominent, is to be observed in the frequent recurrence of those resting-places of the humble traveller, the little way-side inns dotted here and there along the highways and byways of our land. No great traveller myself-a loiterer often-I still have genera-influences of their cheerful firesides, their flowery porch, reason to acknowledge the gladdening or the soothing the aspect of comfort within, of tranquillity without; giving the preference to the one or the other, according to the humour of the moment, the time, or the season; and, strange to say, amidst the material comforts most valued under such circumstances, always finding addiwhere the name of the dwelling suggested some associational satisfaction in taking up my temporary quarters tion, less substantial indeed, but often more attractive, than even the neatness and good-fare experience had

We once tried to get a refractory infant to sleep under the influence of the polacca in "I Puritani." We laboured unceasingly for one long hour, and seemed as nigh gaining our point as ever. The imp was still grizzling and cooing, and stretching and kicking, with most unequivocal evidence of being "wide awake," and we found we were rolling the stone of Sisyphus. We betook ourselves to "Auld Lang Syne;" the kick-taught me almost invariably to expect. ing subsided, the grizzling died away in a confused murmur between a faint snore and a deep sigh, and in ten minutes the young rebel was as fast as the pyramids. The "old tune" had done the work, and we never intend to experimentalize any more with new-fangled lullabies.

There are few hearts but what have a grey stone or two erected in them to the memory of some departed loved ones. These consecrated tablets are mercifully shadowed by Time into a soft oblivion, and we are spared the pang of continually tracing their mournful inscription, until a ray of light is thrown by some thought-star, and we con over the sad words with renewed devotion. All poets and philosophers have discovered how slight a cause will bring back our warmest recollections, and per

Amongst the many suggestive names-which, passing by the more common ones, as mere signs of the timesalways led me to give a preference to their past or hidden associations, I remember one in particular, which once upon a time took such hold of my fancy as to tempt me somewhat out of my way in more senses than one. Not but that the little dwelling possessed attractions enough derer could desire; just removed from the stir of the in itself, and was as enticing a halt as sportsman or wanvillage, about a half quarter of a mile from its entrance; retiring, not retreating, from the shaded road by the breadth of a narrow strip, paled in to protect the vine, clustering luxuriantly over casements and porch ; but perfectly irresistible was the name, peeping out from little bit of sentimentality, trimly painted black and amidst the broad leaves that just suitably shadowed the white, in a sort of demure second mourning, quite suitable too-"The Widow's Return."