of which is diametrically opposed to systems of private tuition as well as to the most public instruction; and, as our own views are entirely in accordance with his on this important point, we shall give an extract from the essay on Benevolence, that seems to bring conviction along with it:— "An only son who is placed in the midst of indulgent friends, knows no restraint, no contradiction; his wishes are fondly anticipated, his pleasures are studiously promoted; he receives every instance of attention and kindness, as he does the common bounties of nature,—light, heat, air,— without a sense of dependence, gratitude, and affection: and he is trained to complete selfishness. Another, in early life is subjected to judicious authority, and surrounded by companions and equals; and this, in my opinion, is essential to the development of the benevolent principle. He has, like each individual of the circle, his peculiar propensities and desires; mutual concession he finds is mutual happiness; this is impressed on him by experience, or by a species of instinctive reasoning; and while he holds his self-love, which is essential to his well-being, that portion of it which passes into selfishness is transmuted into benevolence." The author next draws attention to the effects which a well regulated and not over-crowded school produce upon the morals and habits of youth, and also to the relative position of master and pupil: “the preceptor who is mild and benevolent opens the mind of the pupil, and gains his affection: the scholar in return loves his master, and this principle becomes the motive and guide of his conduct. He respects his master, and desires his esteem; hence he studies to please,—to please is to gratify his affection, and the gratification of his affection constitutes his happiness." This sorites, this little chain of argument, is sound, simple reasoning, and places the duties and the feelings that should, and constantly do, influence both parties, in the true light. The whole tendency, however, of this, and indeed of other passages in these essays, is to show the great superiority of what are called private schools, or of limited numbers, to those multitudinous assemblages in collegiate foundations, where it would be utterly impossible for the head-master "to mark the opening propensities, affections, and passions, and with vigilance and assiduity rear them to virtue." We cannot notice the intermediate essays between those on selfishness and good breeding, which are introduced just at that distance from the beginning of the volume, that the subject itself may be supposed to stand from the commencement of the system of morals,-and here, the very methodical mind of the author is amply displayed in his subdivisions of the subject. Assuming Good Breeding as the generic name, he separates its various shades into a number of different species, each possessing some essential quality that marks its distinction very sufficiently. Amongst these shades are included good manners, pedantry, good nature, politeness, refinement, fashion, etiquette, &c., with their opposites: rules being given to promote the cultivation of one class, and to secure an avoidance of the other. We should wish to have referred to the essays on "Youth and Age," "Prosperity and Adversity," and "Public Life;" but our limits are nearly exhausted; only space enough remaining for the following pithy and impressive extract from the same essay, "On Good Breeding," with which we must reluctantly conclude. "Etiquette, or rules for social and moral conduct, assiduously inculcated on youth, my experience pronounces to be pernicious. Cultivate the heart with the benevolent sympathies, and good society will easily and naturally form the deportment to corresponding manners. A young man has been carefully instructed in religious and moral principles; he is open and complaisant in demeanour, steady and liberal in sentiment; he cherishes in himself, and admires in others, integrity, truth, sincerity, honour; and he exhibits a beautiful model of ingenuous youth. A young man has been sedulously fashioned to etiquette of manners; he estimates the character of every individual according as it approaches or recedes from this standard, and regards it as one does the ceremonies of religion, while he neglects its very essence. He is polite, yet his politeness becomes formal; the formality, however, may be reduced to natural ease; yet under this natural ease may be generally discovered conceit, dissimulation, and selfishness." SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH. PROFESSOR COLLADON has made an interesting experiment in the Lake of Geneva. It has been long known that the effect of the collision of two hard bodies is sensible at a small distance under water. Franklin has recorded the fact, that if you plunge the head completely under water, you may hear the collision of two stones at the distance of half a mile. M. Burdenst, of the French Academy of Sciences, has made some experiments at rather greater distances at sea, using a bell (timbre), and plunging his head under water to listen. In 1826, M. Colladon undertook to measure accurately the velocity of sound under water in our lake. His experiments led him to discover that a thin metallic vessel closed below, open above, may emit a sound which travels under water without anything above indicating its existence. This discovery has led to that of an instrument by which the sound of a bell or other sonorous body plunged and struck under water may be heard at the distance of several leagues. Thus, instead of plunging his head, the observer may sit in a boat, his ear leaning on the instrument, which will receive below the surface of the lake the sonorous vibrations, that are propagated at the rate of a mile in a second. To take a measure, M. Colladon has some powder, ignited at the moment that the bell is struck, while he watches at a distance of several leagues. As soon as he sees the flash, he sets the hand or index of the chronometer in motion: the sound arrives soon after; he stops the hand. The space which it has passed over on the dial marks the time that the sound has taken to traverse the distance. The measures taken by this measure at great distances are remarkable for their precision and regularity. Water transmits sound four and a quarter times quicker than air; for in the atmosphere sound takes thirteen seconds to traverse a league, or three miles. M. Colladon made his experiments at first in the greatest breadth of the lake Rolle and Thonion; he has just repeated them at the enormous distance of nearly nine leagues, between the point of Promentheux and the hill of Grandvaux, near Cully. Thus, then, water is a body so perfectly elastic, that a blow with a hammer struck by one man, moves the entire mass of our lake, that is to say, nearly 300 millions of pounds of water, every drop of which moves in its turn, with a force capable of affecting a thin iron plate, to make M. Colladon's instrument sound. This is, doubtless, a marvellous fact, of which advantage may be taken in navigation; for at the distance of ten leagues merchantmen are scarcely visible; the report of a cannon is heard or not, according to the state of the atmosphere by the transmission of sounds under water, squadrons might be rallied, invisible signals given, by night as well as by day, in foggy as well as in clear weather. M. Colladon does not doubt that under favourable circumstances he could communicate at sea at the distance of fifty or sixty leagues. It is easy to distinguish under water the several kinds of sound proceeding from blows struck on iron, bronze, or wood. M. Colladon has found that it is an error to suppose that steamers frighten fish by their noise. The paddles of a steam-boat of one hundred horse power make scarcely any noise below water. To the Editor of Tegg's London Magazine. SIR,-My health requiring that I should try a change of air, I went to reside a few days at Guildford, and, in my rambles round that beautiful and picturesque country, I chanced to get into conversation with a countryman hoeing turnips; I asked him to give me a small turnip, and offered him in return sixpence. The man first looked at me, then at the sixpence, and said, " Sir, I feel obliged for your intended goodness; I have an excellent master, he is severe but just; he would have no objection to my giving a turnip, but would discharge me if I sold one-please, therefore, to take your money again." After a few minutes' conversation, he said his dinner-hour had arrived, and prepared to go, adding, at the same time, that as I seemed to delight in cottage gardens, perhaps I would favour him by looking at his? I went with him, and entered his cottage, which was small, but clean and neat. Two children were seated with their mother at a small round table, and a plate was placed for the father, on whose coming both children scrambled down from their chairs to kiss him. I felt delighted with this scene; I saw a beautiful little garden of early flowers in the front, and at the back, ground prepared for potatoes, and a pig in the sty. On my return into the cottage I had a nice hot potato, after which I gave a trifle to each of the children, and retired with feelings such as I cannot describe. Seeing the prospectus of your Magazine, I resolved to write this brief note to suggest as the subject of your next prize Essay-"The Influence of a Cottager's Garden on his Moral and Social Habits." I never knew a cottager who kept a garden who was not a good husband, a good father, a good member of society; it is the duty, therefore, of every influential person to see to these matters, and then his heart will overflow, knowing that he is fulfilling one of the great commands of our Saviour. CIVIS. TEGG'S MAGAZINE. Prize Essay. THE INFLUENCE OF BALLAD POETRY ON THE PEOPLE. BY JOHN HOWDEN, B.A. "Let others make the laws-give me the making of the songs of a country." FLETCHER OF SALTON. No book is to us more delightful than a volume of Ancient Ballads. There is so much fearless originality, so much lofty enthusiasm, with so little of affectation, about those reliques of the olden time, that they appear to us, as Headley expresses it, like so many "garlands fresh from the garden of Nature, still moist and glittering with the dews of the morning." Not that we are one of those who, after the foolish fashion of the day, affect to hold in contempt every work of genius which may not be the production of our own or of an age long since passed away; not that we are inclined to depreciate the writings of those who, in the days of our fathers, were the acknowledged models of excellence in national literature; not that Pope, Swift, and Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Cowper, have fallen with us in one single degree from the "high meridian of their glory"- much less have they passed away beyond the "visible diurnal sphere;" but that in the spirit of the old ballads we fancy we can trace the spirit of the times in which they were composed, and are therefore inclined to hold them as faithful reflectors, not indeed of national events, but certainly of national customs and national feelings. It is in this that their principal, though not their only, charm consists— that their leading characteristic is to be found. We say their principal, but not their only, charm; for whether-as in that most exquisite of the Grecian ballads, the Danaë of Simonides*-there be breathed the purest spirit of earthly love and tenderness, or-as in the Harmodius and Aristogeiton of Callistratus—the loftiest strain of vengeance, exultation, and triumph,—we find in these коλa of the days of old-as in the Legends of the Edda and the Saga, the Songs of the Scalds, the Bars of the Minne Singers, and the Lays of our own beloved Bards-the same genius of the soul pervading all-in all we can trace the same * The reader will find appended to this article a tolerably faithful, but not very elegant, translation of this celebrated fragment. The Harmodius is already well known to the public through the paraphrases of Lord Chief Justice Denman and Mr. Elton. VOL. I.-NO. II. F natural and impassioned eloquence, the same terse, nervous simplicity, the same rare effulgence and impalpable colouring-now, all pomp and dignity, picturing forth "in stateliest and most regal argument," some old ancestral story, inspiring to deeds of noblest daring by its soul-breathed power-and now, all simplicity, tenderness, and pathos, ranging through the ethereal realms of feeling and of fancy, thrilling the very soul within us by reason of their exceeding harmony and transcendent sweetness; Thus it is that Ballad Poetry, from the days of the Aoidoi and Rhapsodoi* downwards, has exercised a greater influence on the popular mind than any other species of rhythmical composition. But partaking, as it must partake, either of national glory and superstition on the one hand, or of national character, customs, and modes of thinking on the other, it is only amongst a people who, in their intense longings after home scenes and simple nature, have their souls attuned to that fervency and intensity of feeling, which an all-pervading spirit of patriotism can alone produce, -whose traditions and memories are of the dead-who dwell where their fathers dwelt-whose sepulchres they inherit, that the art which claims for its master-springs liberty and the love of country; which clings to the "durable hills rather than to the fleeting clouds;" which is imbued to the very core with lofty thoughts and bold imaginings,—can live, and move, and have its being. For, where guided and impelled by despotic power, whether monarchical or hierocratic, (the latter, indeed, being by far the more baleful supremacy of the two,) with no intercommunity of motion, moral or intellectual, save what results from their common subjection to one controlling momentum-with every central and assimilating principle uprooted in every heart, from the palace and the temple, even to the hut, the hovel, and the floating raft-their hopes and fears, their opinions and prejudices, all perpetually changing with those of their lord, -amongst a people so situated, how great soever their innate endowments may be, however susceptible by nature of the lovely, the noble, and the grand in art, the Genius of the Soul-Heaven's greatest, proudest gift-must nathless "slumber on in uncreated dust;" for where the body is enslaved, the soul cannot be entirely free. Not that from this we would have it be inferred that the love of Ballad Poetry and Song must necessarily progress in a corresponding ratio with the mental culture and civilisation of a people. The converse of the proposition, indeed, is demonstrably the case; for, the darker the age, the more remarkable we find its love to have been for this species of lyrical composition and the more ignorant the people, the greater their love, and the more enthusiastic their veneration, for the Bard. Nor is it difficult to account for what, at first * “ Ἐν Δηλῳ τοτε πρωτον έγω και Όμηρος 'Αοιδοι, Σκολ. Αριστοφ. |