It is the nearest approach to an English Marseillaise that a sense of social injustice has wrung from the heart of the oppressed. The Rev. Charles Garrett, of Liverpool, writes: "This hymn rings in my mind like the cry of a nation on its knees." A Scottish journalist, writing from South Wales, says: "So far as my experience goes, this hymn can rouse great popular audiences as nothing else can. It seems to go right down to the hearts of the people, and it can be sung very effectively." 13-AMERICA. IN days of peace and prosperity, through the crisis of the Civil War, and on most public occasions since the war, this hymn has gradually won recognition as a national one without the ceremonial of adoption in any historic scene. The author of the words, the Rev. Samuel Francis Smith, D.D., says of their origin: "The song was written at Andover during my student life there, I think in the winter of 1831-32. It was first used publicly at a Sunday-school celebration of July 4, in the Park Street Church, Boston." It was, indeed, an attempt to give "God Save the King" the ring of American republican patriotism. Public-school teachers throughout the United States find it most helpful in awakening a love for and a pride in the new country among the heterogeneous mass of child immigrants that must be welded into patriotic American citizens. The well-known missionary hymn, "The Morning Light is breaking," was also written at Andover at about the same date. To the author, his class-mate Oliver Wendell Holmes refers in the lines: "And there's a nice fellow of excellent pith, Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith." My Sweet land of Liberty, Y country! 't is of thee, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died; My native country! thee, I love thy rocks and rills, Let music swell the breeze, Our fathers' God! to Thee, To Thee we sing; Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light, Great God, our King! 14-THE MARSEILLAISE. ON the 5th July, 1792, when Revolutionary France was menaced with destruction by internal treason and external war, -the latter taking tangible shape in the person of the Duke of Brunswick and 80,000 Prussians, Hessians, and the royalist émigrés, -the Marseilles municipality mustered 517 men of the rank and file, with captains of fifties and of tens, 600 in all, and bade 66 them "March, strike down the tyrant." Without an arrangement, or station, or ration, these black-browed Marseillese who knew how to die" made their way for 600 miles across France to Paris. "The thought which works voiceless in this black-browed mass, an inspired Tyrtæan Colonel, Rouget de Lille, has translated into grim melody and rhythm, in his Hymn or March of the Marseillese, luckiest musical composition ever promulgated, the sound of which will make the blood tingle in men's veins, and whole armies and assemblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of Death, Despot, and Devil." For which indeed France had not long to wait, for on Nov. 6, 1792, when Dumouriez smote the Austrians at Jemappes, it was recognised that in the Marseilles a new power had descended from above upon the French armies, and that henceforth and for many years to come they were invincible. Carlyle writes thus of that memorable day. Dumouriez, overrunning the Netherlands, came upon the Austrians at Jemappes, near Mons: "And fire-hail is whistling far and wide there, the great guns playing and the small; so many green heights getting fringed and maned with red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing, and swept back on that, and is like to be swept back utterly; when he rushes up in person, the prompt Polymetis, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with clear tenor-pipe, uplifts the Hymn of the Marseillaise,' entonna la Marseillaise, ten thousand tenor or bass pipes joining; or say, some forty thousand in all, for every heart leaps at the sound; and so, with rhythmic march-melody, waxing ever quicker to double and to treble quick, they rally, they advance, they rush, death-defying, man-devouring; carry batteries, redoutes, whatsoever is to be carried; and like the fire-whirlwind, sweep all manner of Austrians from the scene of action. Thus, through the hands of Dumouriez, may Rouget de Lille, in figurative speech, be said to have gained miraculously, like another Orpheus, by his Marseillese fiddle-strings (fidi ous canoris), a victory of Jemappes, and conquered the Low Countries." From that moment the Marseillaise became the National Anthem of France. All through the Napoleonic wars her armies marched to the music of Rouget de Lille, which made the tour of Europe with the eagles of France. Afterwards it became a proscribed hymn, and was, in consequence, all the more cherished. Whenever revolution burst out, her first note was ever sounded by the Marseillaise. During the Second Empire it was proscribed until the march on Berlin, which was to end at Sedan, when the Emperor permitted the nation he had betrayed once again to hear the stirring strains in which, for nearly a hundred years, its patriotic passion had vibrated through Europe. Not even the Marseillaise could avert Sedan, but it was to the music of the Marseillaise that the Empire was overthrown, and it remains to this day- Russian alliance notwithstanding the National Hymn of the French Republic. ALLONS, la ative! LLONS, enfants de la Patrie, Contre nous de la tyrannie Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras Aux armes, citoyens, formez vos bataillons! Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons. Que veut cette horde d'esclaves, Ces fers dès longtemps préparés? (bis) Quel transport il doit exciter! Quoi, ces cohortes étrangères Aux armes, citoyens (etc.). |