clothes of a man and singing before a mixed audience songs which twenty years ago would have been confined to the Cider Cellars or the Coal Hole, and would not even in those dens of infamy have found listeners until after midnight. To what a change in the manners and habits of the English people does this state of things point! It is true that songs and ballads form no longer the staple of our literature, but as a straw will show the direction of the wind, they serve to indicate with more or less precision the habits and tastes of those who delight in them. And if this be the case, and there is really too much reason for thinking that it is, the life of the masses of the middle and lower classes of our countrymen must be compounded in about equal proportions of impurity and frivolity; while their pleasures, if these songs be taken as a criterion, are chiefly derived from the contemplation of profane, vulgar, and revolting ideas and images. There was a time, and that a not far distant one, when the ballads of the English people were based for the most part upon noble and chivalrous subjects; when a love of truth and right, and a hearty scorn of meanness and ignobility of sentiment illuminated the songs of the populace; when if sin, shame, and dishonour were spoken of, they were not turned into matters for vulgar jesting, but a decent gravity was observed, and the dignity of virtue was not insulted; when a healthy and masculine love of Nature and delight in her works shone through the rustic verse; and when some glow of dramatic power and passion gave a living and a vivid reality to even the humblest attempts. But this 'enlightened' age of popular education and smart pupil-teachers has seen a painful change come over all these things. In these latter days SUCCESS has become the idol before which all must offer their devotions, and now the history of a successful railway contractor, or the life of a wealthy grocer, finds more readers and more admirers than the story of the toil of an apostle, the agony of a martyr, or the glory of a saint. Now, the possession of wealth is held of infinitely higher account than the honours won by diligent and unswerving self-sacrifice, and the history of the children of Israel becomes again a fact for the people of England, inasmuch as they have set up their golden calf higher than ever before, and a degrading Manicheism has usurped the rights of the Maker of the Universe. Such, if the tinsel be stripped off, is the true character of the age, in spite of the rhetorical flourishes with which 'popular' writers have disguised it; and as it is, so is it reflected in the songs and drama of the time. A base, worldly and heartless tone is, indeed, perpetually discoverable in these compositions. Instead of the worthy The Poets' Themes. 129 worthy singers of the times gone by, who found in their hearts the passion and feeling to which they gave life and body in their verse, we have a race of hack-verse makers who derive their inspiration from books, and their subjects from the very worst points in the lives and morals of their fellows. And this is the more to be lamented since the age is not in itself altogether deficient in glorious deeds. Our coasts are the perpetual witnesses of acts of heroic self-sacrifice, and of unconscious and unquestioning bravery and virtue, while an event such as the loss of the Birkenhead' is one to the full as splendid as any of those recorded in history-one which must bring tears of joy and pride to the eyes of every true Englishman, and wring from him thanks to God that he is of the same blood with those who died there, and, so far at least, shares in the inextinguishable glory which attaches to their names. But such things as these find no expression in our popular literature, a paragraph in the corner of a country newspaper is their sole record, and they pass into oblivion. unhonoured and unsung. We have plenty of songs celebrating the triumphs of vulgarity and chicanery, or relating at ample length the adventures of clerks, shop-girls, and 'dashing Cyprians ;'-why have we no one to write for us a ballad that might be sung about the streets, or by the fire-sides of English homes in winter-a ballad that might worthily celebrate such deeds as these? Why should our poets and song-writers persist in going to all the ends of the earth for their tragedy, or into the slums of the modern Babylon for their comedy, when materials such as these lie ready to their hands? Or, do they desire subjects of unrelieved grief and terror-our streets are filled night after night with a crowd of well-dressed women, every third one of whom could, if she chose, tell a story of poverty, perfidy, misery, and disgrace, that is a shame and a scandal to a country calling itself Christian. If our verse-writers would but learn the one lesson that 'that is best which lieth nearest,' if they would but write of the greater subjects they see and know, the wrongs and sorrows of these would not be unsung, and we might congratulate ourselves upon the fact that a popular song is no longer the glorification of shame, and a place of popular amusement no longer the home of vice and filthiness. These considerations all lead down to the true cause of the trifling value of modern song-writing and the modern drama. There was a time in which our balladists wrote, not for the mere sake of writing, or because of the money to be made by their labours, and when our dramatists strove, however imperfectly, to hold the mirror up to nature.' The verse was was written because the poet could do no otherwise-something within him would find a voice, and bubbled forth into song as naturally as the life and love of the nightingale. With the invention of printing, and the cheap and rapid mode of production thereby introduced, a change came over the aspect of things, and ballad-writing, ceasing to be the work of the poet, became a trade, governed by the laws of supply and demand. The change was, of course, gradual, but it has been complete; its consequence is that ballad-writing is, in the present day, a work of the smallest consideration and lowest practical value. The persons who exercise it are, almost without exception, utterly destitute of all the nobler faculties of insight and dramatic power; but, having a certain knack of versification, they contrive to make a living by the production of a vast quantity of trash, which, were they or their publishers wise, would never see the light. A similar reproach attaches to modern plays. They are produced as a matter of trade, and bear all the characteristics which might be expected on that account. The plots are almost invariably taken from the French, and it not unfrequently happens that the dialogue is transplanted in a similar manner. The consequences are, perhaps, felt most severely by the class which perpetrates the crime. A public accustomed to the highly flavoured dishes which suit the French taste cannot appreciate the simpler plots and less violent sensations. which characterize the best periods of the English school, and, as a consequence, the dramatist who relies solely upon his invention in the production of his work is likely to be speedily distanced by his less honest, but more worldly-wise, competitor. As for dramatic criticism, that is practically dead. The journal which attacks the productions of the modern stage, speedily finds itself shut out from those houses the pieces produced at which he has condemned, so that journalistic criticism is reduced either to a complaisant praise of everything produced at every theatre, or to a mere notification of the appearance of a new piece, with the cast and a sketch of the plot. Public expression of opinion is gagged in a somewhat similar way. The enthusiastic pitite who should utter too loudly his contempt for the hash presented to him on the stage, would speedily find himself engaged in the contemplation of the theatre from the outside under the guidance of a policeman in the interest of the management. The present state of the literature of the stage and of the music halls, leads to some rather serious reflections as to the state of mind of those who enjoy them, and as to the prevailing tone in society which they reveal. The present genera tion is one greatly given to glorifying itself, to boasting of the material progress which it has made, and to scoffing at the ignorance of its benighted ancestors. But surely we have little reason to be proud of such a state of thought and feeling as that revealed by the songs and plays of which we have spoken. Such things as these are signs of declension rather than progress, and cannot but fill the thoughtful looker-on with the deepest apprehensions for the future of those who take their pleasure in them. He will be inclined to suspect that, with a more extensive range of knowledge, we have become shallower and less reflective; that for the wisdom that comes by thought we have exchanged a crude and superficial knowledge of certain details of fact; that our aspirations, instead of being purified and ennobled by time, have retrograded; and that vice and sensuality have, in spite of our efforts to disguise the fact, to the full as much influence over us as over the most backward of our ancestors. We have, it is true, learned exactly the distance between the sun and the earth, we know how to calculate eclipses, are quite certain that there is nothing supernatural in the lightning, and that the thunder is not the voice of the gods; and now that we have all this knowledge, of what value is it to us? Has it made any one of us wiser or happier, or caused us to occupy ourselves in ways one whit worthier or nobler than those which filled the lives of our forefathers? Are our pleasures purer or more refined? less tainted by sensuality or less scarred by vice? It can hardly be questioned that a truthful answer to these questions must be a decided negative. Noble impulses seem in this whirling town life of ours to be almost dead, or pushed aside at the dictation of a vile theory of expediency. The London music halls-alike by their literature and the company which frequent them-prove only too distinctly where many find their chief pleasure, amongst the triumphs of base and ignoble sentiment, and in the contemplation of the lowest forms of vice and impurity; while the condition of the London theatres affords ample evidence that a vehement sensation is greatly preferred by the majority to the highest forms of poetry or the most refined graces of acting. Of the nonsense uttered at the music halls it seems almost useless to speak, though it certainly is a most remarkable circumstance that the popularity of a song should apparently be in an inverse ratio to the rationality of the words. Their baseness and impurity in language and tendency are open to the strongest animadversion. As literature they are utterly worthless, as far as the provocation of genuine fun is concerned they are worse than useless. They They produce no honest and wholesome laughter; the most that they can do is to cause a sort of effervescence of the polluted spirits of the auditors through their lips. It were well if all who delight in them, whose corrupted natures find a congenial food in these worthless and impure stories, who enjoy them, listen to them with approbation, and witness the shameless gestures of the performance without protest, could be brought to see into what a depth of degradation they have fallen, that they have learned to call evil good and good evil,' that their conduct is likely, under such circumstances as these, to be a reflection of the amusements in which they take pleasure, that they are likely to be guided by the basest motives, and that they themselves are on their way to become the slaves of the vilest passions. When people do begin to see this-do begin to realize the moral death of which these productions are a sign-then, but not until then, we may look for a reformation in the productions of the stage, and then we may begin to hope that music halls like those now existing, with their concomitant evils, will pass into the limbo of all worthless things, and their literature become a thing of the past. ART. IV.-STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS. 1. Stimulants and Narcotics, their Mutual Relations; with Special Researches on the Action of Alcohol, &c., on the Vital Organism. By Francis E. Anstie, M.D. London: Macmillan and Co. 1864. 2. Lectures: Chiefly Clinical. By Thomas King Chambers, M.D., Honorary Physican to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales; Physician to St. Mary's Hospital. London: Churchill and Sons. 1864. It THE THE medical profession, like every other that has been petted and privileged, is essentially conservative. clings to the old, and obstinately opposes the new. Hence, within its own circle, and among its own disciples and members, an undying warfare has been carried on, between Authority on the one hand, and Truth on the other. The young and ardent disciples of Physic, inevitably affected by the philosophy of their time, are ever questioning the decrepid opinion' of the past, and demanding that it shall justify its existence by the evidence of facts and reason. Protests against medical |