NATIONAL ANTHEMS.

WE have given in another place some account of the unsuccessful attempt of the Northern States of America to extemporize an appropriate national anthem for the great crisis of the day. We certainly do not think that adversity has as yet pierced deep enough into the American character to reach any true or deep vein of patriotic emotion by which alone such a song could be inspired. For this reason, and not because, as the Americans seem to think, such songs are not easily extemporized by a young nation, does no adequate national anthem spring into existence. In fact, nearly all the known national hymns have been extemporized on single great occasions, and though many of them by nations with a long history behind them, one of them, at least, and that the oldest of all, in the hour of a nation's birth. Perhaps the modern yearning for a single national anthem, bearing something of the character of an imaginative ensign marking the nation's moral unity and community—a yearning which probably neither Greece nor Rome ever shared (unless Tyrtreus's war- songs, partially partaking of this nature, which were called forth by the Messenian war, are to be reckoned as exceptions),—may be ascribed even more to the influence of Hebrew history oh Europe since the Reformation than to any inherent tendency in the characters of the Pro- testant nations. Among the Hebrews, far more than among any people either of the ancient or modern world, music and poetry were the one medium for expressing the national unity. The destiny of the people of Israel is, as it were, sculptured in national song; every step in the history of that wild people is marked by some burst of poetry which at once expressed and deepened the political unity of the race. The birth-song of the nation was Miriam's paean on the Arabian shore of the Red Sea, " Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his rider bath he thrown into the sea." The first break-up of the era of what by the analogy of our own history we may call the Heptarchy, was marked by Deborah's triumph over Sisera, and her bitter reproaches to the neutral tribes which had withheld their aid. The dawning splendour of the monarchy is heralded by David's lament over Saul and Jonathan; the consecration of the Holy City is celebrated by the psalm "Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates ; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in ;" the .passionate wail by the waters of Babylon com- memorates the exile, while the restoration is marked by perhaps the most exquisite poem in any language, the psalm which speaks of the waking from that heavy dream of captivity, as having itself all the unreality of a dream. In no other nation in the world have the great spring-tides of national life ever left so distinct a mark on the poetry of their country, and to our familiarity with the Hebrew lite. rature and faith we doubtless owe more or less the new want which seems to possess the peoples of the modern world.

Yet it is remarkable enough how very recent is the origin of all the more notable national songs among the European nations. The British national hymn, " God save the Queen!" (" Rule, Britannia," is a spurious sort of production which has no real hold of the nation's mind) is the oldest of them, being, as is adequately proved, of Stuart origin, and dating from the exile of James II. ; "The Marseillaise" —if it is to be called a national anthem—a character which it de- serves as little as any of the war songs of Tyrtmus or the Swiss "Battle of Sempach," being strictly a war song—dates from 1792; and the German national hymn of Arndt dates from 1813; the Nor- wegian is very modern ; and Burns's Scotch anthem, " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," which, though a war song in form, must be re- garded as having a broader and more historical significance, not only because it was written some five hundred years after the event it commemorates, but from the breadth and depth of the national sen- timent expressed, is of course not much earlier.

Probably the great rdason why the modern nations are so late in translating their national sentiment into actual poetry while the Hebrews effected this so early and with such marvellous force, lies in the comparative vagueness of the principle of national unity in every other race as compared with the Hebrews. Since, to them, the Lord of Hosts was revealed as the ruler of the nation—and, as they thought for many centuries, the ruler of their nation exclusively, their leader and captain against all other nations—every tarn in the national destiny was a new sign of His favour or displeasure; and this faith neces- sarily operated with greater intensity whilst they believed, not that they were thus educated for the sake of all the other nations of the earth, but rather that the other nations existed for the sake of their discipline and education. Erroneous as this belief was, it necessarily concentrated in one brilliant focus all their patriotism and all their faith ; it raised their minds to the supernatural centre of Jewish union, and forcibly contrasted their own nationality in this respect with that of all the rest of the world. They had not far to look for a national inspiration, it was simply faith in Jehovah, the great na- tional deliverer. Hence the patriotic sentiments and associations which, however strong, are usually diffused very subtly through other nations' history and life, and which usually come out fully only under the dread of invasion in battle songs, were identified by the Jews with every act of worship. The national history itself bore the personal impress of the Eternal character.

In the case of Greece and Rome, there was no such external centre of national unity ; and by the time the culture of the nation had advanced far enough to create any such self-conscious want, the national tie was already becoming too rotten and impure to admit of its being satisfied. The brightest era of Greek literature was not an era of Greek unity; and though it was otherwise in Rome under the Empire, the pride and glory of the Roman in his birth had then already begun to pass into secret humiliation. It is not, perhaps, therefore very surprising that the delight in national hymns is one of very modern origin. Battle songs are of all time; but national anthems, involving a conscious value for the sacredness of national life, are necessarily limited—except where, as in the case of the Hebrews, the national life and religious faith are identified—not only to a literary age, but to an ascending period in national character ; while in the Roman world the literary age marked a descending era in national character.

Among modern national anthems certainly this rule holds : they all belong to a period of renaissance as well as of literary culture.

The English anthem, it is true, originated with a Jacobite, though it was soon moulded to Hanoverian purposes, and breathes more of the spirit of a loyalist age than that of a popular song. But this very fact brings out more strongly than anything that the popular mind of the nation, even at the very moment when it was asserting its own authority afresh, loved to look to some centre of unity outside itself, rather than to a mere centre of gravity within. As originally written, it ran, we are told, thus : " God save great James our King, Long live our noble King God save the King

" Send him victorious, Happy and glorious,

Soon to reign over us,

God save the King !

" 0 Lord our God arise, Scatter his enemies, And make them fall I Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save us all ! " God bless the Prince of Wales, The true born Prince of Wales, Sent us by Thee !

" Grant us one favour more, The King for to restore, As thou hest done before, The Familiel"

The gradual and partial remodelling of this hymn, and the substitu- tion of another for its last verse, to suit the Hanoverian dynasty, is one remarkable testimony to the genuine loyalty even of the popular party, though the object of that loyalty was changed. It was the symbol of authority and law, not the person of the monarch, whom Fnglishmen revered ; and hence the very words in which the return of James was prayed for by his friends served to express—though awkwardly enough, when we consider that we still use the word " send," in the line " Send him victorious"—the people's petition for the preservation of George. The change curiously represents the truth. England felt that the dynasty had ceased to represent the justice of impartial government or to guard their freedom, and de- throned the dynasty ; but the throne remained unshaken, and its occupant received still the English homage which had ever been given to his predecessors. A Jacobite composed the hymn, but it was the new birth of popular loyal sentiment which gained it its wide popu- larity.

The French national song, " The Marseillaise," is, as we said,

almost a mere war song. It was composed by Rouget de Lisle, in 1792, not in the interest of the Revolution, but as a war song for the army of the Rhine against the foreign enemies of France. The last verse alone passes beyond the limits of a mere call to arms : " Holy love of our native land, Guide, uphold the avenger's hand ! Sweet Liberty, come head the fight, Of those who battle for thy right. Let Victory, our flag beneath, Make good the promise of thy breath !

Let thy foes expiring see, Our glory and thy majesty ! Brothers, to arms I your ranks close up I March I let the furrowed earth the blood accursed sup." " Amour sacre de la patrie, Conduis, soutiens nos bras Yen- ' genre .

Liberty, LibertsLeb6rie, Combats avec tea daenseurs ! Sons nos drapeaux que la Victoire Accoure h tea miles accents; Que tee ennemis expirants Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire! Aux armes, citoyens ! formes yea bataillons!

Marchons, marchons !

Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons !"

The American critic has made no indiscriminating comparison be- tween the spirit of this favourite song of France and that of our own land

" How widely do the histories of these two hymns differ, and how cha- racteristic is their difference of the two peoples who have adopted them ! The British hymn, like the British constitution, the product of no man and no time ; the origin of its several parts various and uncertain, or seen darkly through the obscurity of the past ; its elements the product of dif- ferent peoples ; broached at first in secret, and when brought to light, frowned down as treasonable, heretical, damnable ; but at length openly avowed, and gradually growing into favour ; modified, curtailed, added to in important points by various hands, yet remaining vitally untouched ; at last accepted because it was no longer prudent to refuse to yield it place ; and finally insisted upon as the time-honoured palladium of British liberty. The " Marseillaise," written to order, and in one night, to meet a sudden, imperative demand : struck out at the white heat of unconscious inspiration, perfect in all its parts Lotus, term, atque rotundus; and in six months adopted by the people, the army, and the legislature of the whole nation. The air of the first, simple, solid, vigorous, dignified, grand, the music of common sense and fixed determination; the words, though poor enough, mingling trust, and prayer, and self-confidence, and respect for whosoever is above us, and a readiness to fight stoutly when God and the law are on our aide: the other a war cry, a summons to instant battle, warning, appealing, denounc- ing, fiercely threatening the vengeance of the Furies ; having no inspiration but glory, and invoking no god but liberty ; beginning in deliberate enthu- siasm, and ending in conscious frenzy."

How different again is the spirit of the fine German hymn of Arndt, which, written in 1813, after Napoleon's invasion of Germany, sud- denly acquired in Germany a popularity as wide, and far more noble, than the passionate shriek of the "Marseillaise" had gained for itself in revolutionary France. The hymn itself is untranslatable. Its ruling idea is the intellectual and moral unity which really underlies all the disjecta membra of the German nation. This is the key-note : " Was 1st des Dentschen Vaterland ? " Which is the German's Father-

land?

Tell me at last his native land ! Far as resounds the German tongue Or German songs to God are sung,—

Be that the sign be that the sign ! That, noble German, claim for thine!"

To those who know the whole hymn, simple, diffuse, eloquent, and breathing a kind of childlike protest in the name of German senti-

ment against the painful testimony of political facts, the contrast with the English and French national anthems is very striking. It does not look up reverentially to an external emblem of authority and government like the English hymn, it does not breathe the spirit of martial ecstasy like the French (though the occasion on which it was written was very similar), but it looks within and finds

So, nenne endlich mir das Land ! So weft die Deutsche Zunge klingt! Mid Gott im Himmel Lieder singt, Des soli es sein! das soli es sein ! Das, wackrer Deutsche, nenne dein!"

in a common language, common piety, common awe, in German faith and German love—" Deutsch Treue and Deutsche Liebe" —the bond of German unity. But like both the English and the French, it is a renaissance hymn.

No wonder the Americans wish for a true national hymn. The "Star-spangled Banner" speaks for itself; it is a song of spangles, and the metre suggests ballet-music rather than the firm trust of a great nation. " Hail Columbia !" is better, though not good ; but it is rather a hymn to George Washington than a national hymn. Sin- cerely do we trust that their desire to see a great national hymn arise may be crowned with complete success; and if it be so, we think we may predict that it will give expression to a profounder kind of faith and freedom, and point to a source of deeper unity, than either the " Star-spangled Banner" of the Union or even the truly " steadfast" mind which won for Americans the first great step in the art of self- government and self-restraint.