10 JUNE 1843, Page 14

PROGRESS OF THE JACOBITE AGITATION.

THE Government would do well to look after Mr. WILSON. While the life of Queen Vie-roars is spared, there may be little danger to the house of Brunswick; but who can count on the future ? and a day may come when the Conservative party will rue the licence which they now give the accomplished Scot to revive the attachment for CHARLES EDWARD: recounting his adventures, singing the songs of his fol- lowers—martial, loving, regretful ; and carrying whole audiences away with him into utter oblivion of the existing state of politics; and in the very teeth of the "Duke of CUMBERLAND," who has just taken his seat in the House of Lords, probably to overawe the Jacobite. It beats "Repale" hollow. Chance gave us tbe opportunity of seeing the effect on a semi-rural audience, at Kensington' on Tuesday night ; the lecture being "The Adventures of Prince Charles." Mr. WILSON'S London audiences no doubt include adventurous travellers from those remote regions "off the stones " ; but the audience of Tuesday belonged strictly to the village, as much so as if it had been a hundred miles from town. Now, the mixture of history, anecdote, and song, told with them as palpably as if they had been connoisseurs and had known all about it. In fact they did so, for the lecturer made them. By his brief review of the events of the period, his description of the feelings of the people, translations of the songs from well-delivered genuine Scotch into plain English, and his admirable singing, he made "the meanest capacity" in the room fully alive to the close relation between language, feeling, and music ; so that many, for the first time very likely, understood the real significancy and value of music, and its mode of working as a social or political instrument. They perceived that the most exquisite ex- pression and finish can be given without extravagance or ornament, as in the doting fondness of "Charlie is my darling " ; that energy and spirit can be without noise, as in the subdued but moving and martial burden of " Wha would na fight for Charlie?"—which was so sung that you might fancy you saw the men marching over the heather ; and that the most homely thoughts can find ludicrous utterance in sweet sounds, as in the song about the women going mad for the Chevalier, and in the other with the burden "Loons, ye maun gae hame "; that the words with the music, in fact, were more expressive than any words could be alone. These lectures indeed—for there are others, and Mr. Wu,son as yet only ventures to make one of them about "the Pre— the Chevalier "—are a very interesting illustration of the intimate con- nexion between a national tongue and a national music. As to Ken- sington, the lecturer has sown broadcast some sound musical knowledge of a deeper kind than mere technicalities. And this, let Ministers remem- ber, was about Prince CHARLIE; and it is done all over the country I