No. VI. New Jen eruweoe. CALAMITY. " Poor old England"—Ker deplorable

want of eulogizers, especially vocal eulogizers—Is it true F—By no means— Charges of the" notes" against the Scotch—Desirableness of national varieties —Scotch eulogizers of England—Lowland Scotland and England identical— Living poets—Collected Songs of Dr. Mackay.

A few weeks ago, the existence of an unsuspected national calamity

was disclosed to the English people, which, considering the quarter in which the disclosure was made, and the appalling nature of the calamity itself, appears to have made an impression inconceivably small. It is a question whether any other quarter but one took the least notice of it ; which is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the sorrows of the gentlemen who lamented that their wives did not give them a greater variety of puddings or side-dishes, attracted no little sympathy. Yet those disas- ters affected but one or two classes of the community ; whereas this was an affliction that concerned the whole country. It consisted in the aw- ful and scarcely utterable fact, that England had nobody to sing songs about her !

"Will not somebody," said the Times, "give poor old England a turn? Have we no poet to celebrate our green meadows and pleasant uplands? Has not England one tradition of past glory by flood or field ? Do we count for so little in the councils of the world, that there is no- body to say a good word for us ? Surely there are bright eyes and slen- der forms in England which well deserve the tribute of a song, although their fair possessors were not christened Peggie, or Norah, or Haidoe, or Inez."

This expostulation originated in the honours paid to the memory of Barns,—a subject that would not have again been referred to in these pages, had not the leading journal returned to it more than once, pro- nouncing the commemoration foolish, and the Scotch petty and "provin- cial" for saying so much about their "nation," and nothing about Eng- land. National Scottish song offends the great English newspaper. Welsh national harping offends it. Tom Moore has "much to answer for" with his national Irish harping; and it does not look very compla- cently upon Spanish harping ; to say nothing of Greek. For why, asks the Times, is there no harping about England. What a shame to England that she has no songs ! What an injustice on the part of the non-singers ! How monstrous, above all, that Englishmen should join Scotchmen in singing songs about Scotland, while no Scotehman thinks of singing songs about England ! Scotch, Scotch, Scotch, is the whole of a Scotchman's song. Will nobody cry English, English, English, and so rescue our countrymen from this degraded state ? England has done far greater things than Scotland. Will nobody sing about them? Scotland herself; though we allow her all her provincial merits and a great deal of cleverness, bravery, &c. would have been no- thing to speak of without England,—poor old England. Will nobody sing about that ?—The readers of the Times almost expected that in the enthusiasm of its sorrow it would itself break out into verse, and supply, so far, the song which it wanted. The following might have been one of the stanzas—

Can no one discover a single good thing:of us ?

No one proclaim us a "nation" too ?

Is it possible nobody's coming to sing:of us ?

Nobody coming to too-rud-too ?

"We poor English folk, we and our fathers," observes the Times (to return to the words of the paper) "have done a few things in our time, and at last we want to be a nation. We want to set up a ' nationality ' of our own. We want to have speeches and songs made about us, and to meet together and declare we are the finest fellows in the world. Everybody is somebody except an Englishman. There is the Sclavonio nationality, and the Lombard nationality, and the Celtic nationality— and, oh ! ye gods and little fishes, there is the Corllote nationality. The very members of our confederate kingdom turn; upon us, and treat us like dirt."

The reader sees the mixture of light and serious in these passages. He probably thought at first, as we did, that it was going to be nothing but light, and wise, and witty throughout ; but the tone gradually be- comes graver, till at last it is entirely grave ; the subject is returned to in succeeding papers : Scotland gives offence in wishing to keep its " lion " ; it is angrily taunted with a monument which it is raising to its

hero, Wallace; and it is repeatedly told that all this is indicative of its being no nation at all, but simply a province ; the victim of a "provin- cial vanity," which it will "probably take another half century" to shake of and which "sadly mars" its "many claims to regard and re- spect."

Surely the Times has suffered itself to be overcome in this matter by...a pure fit of spleen. Wanting to "set up a nationality of our own !" to have "speeches and songs made about us " ; and to meet and declare "we are the finest fellows in the world ! " Why, we are always doing it : always doing it all : always "English nationing " it, making speeches about ourselves, and declaring there is no country like us. Other nations charge us with it, and have been doing so for more than a century. We do it in parish meetings, in Parliament, in pamphlets and newspapers, in theatres, (where we are always "ruling the waves,") in taverns, where every Englishman compliments every other Englishman ; and the more he does it, the more he is applauded. Then, who in applauding England and Englishmen, thinks of applauding Scotchmen ? Are the Scotch

poets toasted during celebrations of Shakespeare ? And when Scotch- men meet for a Scottish purpose, why should they be expected to say something in behalf of "poor old England " ?

The truth is, Scotchmen think so highly of England, and know she is so amply sufficient for her own praise and ascendancy, that they feel it would be as absurd to say a good word for her on such occa- sions, as to toast the stars or the universe. Nature has made England the larger, the more fertile, and the better situate of the two old king- doms, and it was in the ordinary course of things that the one kingdom should gradually absorb the power of the other, without any greater me- rit on the part of the bigger kingdom, or any shame, as a kingdom, to the less. There were Scotchmen, it is true, of whom other Scotchmen had reason to be ashamed, when a king was sold to a parliament ; and a similar thing happened, when money was made of the Union. But have Englishmen no money offences to answer for, even in these proud and highly instructed days, when in proportion to the very bigness of a swindle, indulgence is claimed for it, and when it seems universally considered a pleasant and rather comfortable thing to hear lectures given in favour of " humbug "?

Suppose,—we grant it is a very wild supposition—but suppose for the sake of argument, that by some inconceivable freak of fortune or convul- sion of nature, England wore united to France, and, as a less kingdom in size, became subordinate to the greater. Would there be no hanker- ing in the minds of Englishmen to have their country considered a king- dom still, rather than a province ? No wish, frivolous as heraldry may - be, to retain its old flag and its " Lion" ? Would any gentleman on the Times newspaper willingly give up even his individual coat of arms, or his crest,—at least, upon demand, and with no consideration for "the respectability of the family " ? Now all which is desired by Scotchmen is to have its old family associations and predilections no less considered ; —to have the symbols under which it is allowed to have fought and bled nobly, respected ;—to be treated, as the gentleman would have his bit of heraldry treated ; and such poets and worthies as his family may have had the good fortune to possess among them, allowed to be what they are, and to confer rights of family commemoration. What harm is there in all this ? How desirable indeed is it not ? And what a loss would not the reverse be to the little variety of costume and manners left among us ; which is a loss to the picturesque, the poetical, and the amusing. Our good queen, benefiting by the repose and the change of air which she enjoys in Scotland, has taken a fancy to the plaid ; and who, on all these accounts, woiild not wish her to retain it, and please her eyes with its colour on her children? Perhaps, on St. Patrick's Day, she puts a shamrock in the cap of the little Prince whom she has judiciously named after that saint and if so, so much the better. It is not a kindly regard for such "nationalities," but a contempt for them, that could possibly do any harm. Show a respect for a man or for his family in little things, and he will be doubly disposed to think you wish him well in greater. For he will naturally think how very considerate you are, and how well you understand the common feelings of humanity.

What is particularly hard upon the Scotch in the present instance is, that they are accused of never saying a good word for Englishmen, or even for Britons as chiefly composed of Englishmen, when they are remarkable for the reverse. Not say a good word for them? Who wrote the noblest ode ever produced by our naval victories, but Camp- bell, a Scotchman? Who wrote our great national naval song, "Rule Britannia," but a Scotchman, Jamie Thomson ? Who but he, the same Scotchman, has immortalized in his " Seasons " those "green meadows and pleasant uplands," for which the Timee so strangely asks whether "no poet" is to be found ? And who but the same poet, in the same poem, and in other of his productions besides, has repeatedly celebrated England in general, and almost every one of its great men in particular, its Alfreds, Newtons, Lockes, Raleighs, Sidneys, Bacons, &c., not to mention his brother English poets ; while, curiously enough, hardly a Seotchman is mentioned in his pages but an old friend or two, though he spoke in a broad Scotch accent to the last, and has celebrated the Tartan. But the fine old Scottish poetry of King James the First and Dunbar had hardly been dug up in his time, and Burns was not yet born.

We grant, by the way, that Scotland, as ordinarily understood by that name, is but a portion of England . for when Englishmen speak of Scotchmen they generally mean Lowland Scotchmen, and not High- landers, whose mountains and Gaelic tongue keep them more apart from us. Lowland Scotchmen, for the most part, are but Englishmen on the other side of the Tweed; that is to say, men made up, like other Eng- lishmen, of Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Irish, Welsh, and Normans. Their names are sufficient to show their origin. Where do we meet, any where, with more English names than those of the Thomsons, Robert- sons, Wilsons, Hunters, Blacks, Millers, Skinners, and Adam Smiths ? The name of Burns itself, with many others supposed to be exclusively Scotch, is English. " Bourne—Anglo-Saxon, Byrne, Burn," says Ri- chardson; "A well, spring, fountain." And to complete that matter, especially in the eyes of such as fancy the geniuses of men derived from their mothers, the maiden name of Burns's mother was the very English one of Brown. Rejoice, ye multitudinous Browns of England, possessors of the third commonest name in the language : say rather, the second ; for Jones only, next to Smith, goes before you ; and Jones is commoner, only because it is the name:of whole tribes of Welshmen, that gallant but small people possessing but a paucity of names. Barns was plainly half a Brown ; and as mens' wives are their better halves, let the Browns

by all means claim the better half of the poet. Lowland Scotland being England, no harm is done to our neighbours. Burns at all events ap- pears to have inherited from his mother the fine eyes for which he was remarkable : and with the eyes he probably inherited the tendency to see what they saw, and the love which they procured him.

Scotchmen not speak of Englishmen! Why, the two most celebrated historians of England, Hume and Macaulay, are Scotchmen; the latter a very Scottish Scotchman, a Highlander, or at least of direct Highland stock. Who has written more warmly about Englishmen of all kinds, historical and otherwise, than Professor Craik, of Belfast? though he did also, it cannot be denied, make the best speech in honour of his countryman the poet, of any that has yet appeared in the kingdom. What Englishman has written so finely about the Englishman, Johnson, as the Scotchman, Thomas Carlyle ? And as to poets, we know not if Mr. Gerald Massey, who has lately put forth a new national English anthem, be a Scotchman, though he has written under genial Scottish wing ; but as the Times laments that there is "no poet," Scotch or English, to say a word for our poor country, here is Mr. Massey, who has many words to say, very English indeed, and strong accordingly. What did Mr. Tennyson do, or Messrs. Alexander Smith and Dobell, during the late war, but help to beat up England's drums for her with all their poetic might? and at the moment the Times professed to be calling in vain for a song, the popular songs of Dr. Mackay, a manifest High- lander by his name, at least in origin, were probably being sung to the honour and glory of England in a hundred different places, they having been just collected into a volume, and the whole book being one of the most various, most sensible, and most singable of its kind that we ever read. This last quality is not to be wondered at; for the music, it seems, as well as the words of several, is the writer's own. Now, there are but two songs in the volume in honour of the poet's race, the Highlanders, and some dozen in special praise, not of collective Britannia, but of England by itself,—England. One of them begins- " Little England, great in story, Mother of immortal men" : another, "The virtues of Old England!

We'll count them, if we can" : and in a third he says that he has sailed east, west, north, and south, "But never found, on any ground, Where sunlight fell, or rivers ran,

Where blossoms grew, or wild winds blew,

The equal of the Englishman.

The Englishman! the Englishman !

The upright, downright Englishman!

His word is sure, his heart is pure, The ready, steady Englishman!"

and so he goes on, for three more stanzas, with the same burden. This song is followed by another entitled "Rolling Home,"—to England, namely,—which is full of a great, joyous, billowy progression ; the liquid depth of which reminds us of Spenser's line, "Europa, floating through th' Argolic floods."

And the other nine songs are to the same entirely English purpose. We think our commentary on the fit of objection in the Times may conclude here. But we have a word or two more to say of the Doctor's book. We have called it "various" and "sensible." By " various " we mean that it has a great variety of subjects, feelings, and humours, both grave and gay ; and that all these feelings and humours tend to make people wiser and bettor, the prosperous more sympathising, the struggling bolder and more cheerful. It is a very healthy and manly book, and sees fair play to all. No inconsiderable line, it is true, is to be drawn be- tween the conventional phraseology which the author has permitted to himself in many of them, and the capital, off-hand, original style of others. The facility of his pen has probably done him disservice in this

respect, owing to the numerous and sudden calls upon it incidental to song-writers. When he is at his best, nobody beats him in his way; and the way,—that of an English confidence, more enlivened by fancy and cheerfulness than is common with Englishmen, and thus setting them an excellent example, is his own. For sympathy with the very suffering poor, and indignant comments on the heartless privileges allow- ed to the male sex among the rich, Hood and Barry Cornwall are the models,—not without a high and exulting sense of jovial companionship in the latter; but for confronting ordinary difficulties, making the best of things doubtful, and even settling popular questions of employments and morals, such as those between "Trade and Spade," and" Water Drink- ers and Wine Drinkers," here is a poet, in Charles Mackay, provided for the singing and inquiring many. See in particular "Trade and Spade" as aforesaid, the "Doubtful Case of Abstinence and Temperance with the Umpire's Opinion," the "Festival of Labour," the "Gin-Fiend," the "Emigrants," the "Poor Man's Treasures," "Sceptre, Crown, and Throne," "Jones," "Old John Jenkins," "To Leave Your Business All Day Long," "Differences," "The Cup of Oblivion," and the " Giant."

We have carried the "Occasional" this week to so much greater

length than we intended in the present crowded and Parliamentary state of the "Spectator," (I say "We," for the "I," hampers and puts me out, and and I must drop it) that we must content ourselves with ex- tracting the " Giant " : sorry that we cannot add "Differences," and a dozen others, particularly the truly loving and affecting tenderness of the "Cup of Oblivion."

"THE GIANT.

"There came a Giant to my door, A Giant fierce and strong, His step was heavy on the floor, His arms were ten yards long.

He scowl'd and frown'd ; he shook the ground : I trembled through and through ; At length I looked him in the face, And said, Who cares for you ? '

The mighty Giant as I spoke, Grew pale and thin and small, And through his body, as 'twere smoke, I saw the sunshine fall.

His blood-red eyes turn'd blue as skies, He whispered soft and low : 'Is this,' I cried, with growing pride, 'Is this the mighty foe ? '

He sunk before my earnest face, He vanished quite away, And left no shadow on the place Between me and the day.

Such Giants come, to strike us dumb—

But weak in every part, They melt before the strong man's eyes, And fly the true of heart."