tions which imposed on the nations under the name of religion, they announced that out of Zion should go forth the Law and the word of Jehovah. When they did not see, yet they believed, that the proud and despiteful heathen should at length gladly learn of their wisdom, and rejoice to honour them."-pp. 369, 370. We thank the anonymous writer for his valuable book, and would gladly see it reprinted here, but as its publication would not favour any sect, we have no reason to expect to see it in an American form, and accordingly have been thus copious in our extracts from its pages. A few works written with the industry, learning, and philosophical discernment so perceptible in this, and above all marked by the same humane spirit of religion, would do much to relieve the Christian world from the incubus of superstition now resting on its bosom, disturbing its sleep with ugly dreams, yet at the same time forbidding it to awake. So long as Christianity is thought responsible for Judaism, so long will the letter of the Old Testament strangle the spirit of the New. The Bible will be appealed to for sanction of slavery, war, formalism, and a thousand abominations; and so long, likewise, will the real spiritual beauty, the hearty piety, the manly faith which fills so many a page of psalmist and prophet, be lost to the world. The modern Christian may say, with the ancient Greek, Give us light in the darkness only are we afraid. BALLAD LITERATURE. The Pictorial Book of Ballads, Traditional and Romantic: with Introductory Notices, Glossary, and Notes. Edited by J. S. MOORE, Esq., &c. London: 1847-48. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. vi. and 424, vi. and 428. THE origin of Ballads and Ballad-singers we shall for the present leave to the philosophical antiquaries, and for ourselves confess that we know not whether they claim their descent from Shem, Ham, or Japhet. Neither will we undertake to observe the nice distinctions that have been made between Ballads, Romances, and Legends; and the many other distinctions which have not yet been made, but might easily be if any one would show a difference sufficient to afford a basis for such a distinction-or even without that difference. We take a ballad to be a lyrical narration of some human event real or pretended. It may be a ballad of love, or a ballad of war; it may set forth the feelings of the author, and so far be mainly subjective in its character, or only the feelings of the persons described in the poem, and so be mainly objective in its character. It may be long or short, good or bad, old or new. To us in either case it may be a ballad. We say all this, lest it should be supposed from what follows that we are not aware of the distinctions above hinted at, and which have been made by critics and criticasters, who, if not very wise, were at least very nice. On the contrary, we are painfully aware of such distinctions, and respectfully would notice such differences,-but at present we bid farewell to both, and address us to the ballads themselves -understanding the word in the wide sense we have given to it. However, let us narrow the signification a little, so as not to include all the narrative poetry in the world, ecclesiastical and secular. As a general rule, the ballad is simple in the structure both of the plot and the language, which has but a slight rhythmical movement; and in this particular, as well as others, it is distinguished specifically from odes, songs, and yet other kinds of lyric poetry. Nobody doubts that the poem called Chevy-Chase is a ballad, and we give the same name to those beautiful lyrical productions which Mr Macaulay has wrought out of the Roman materials. Indeed, he found the materials in Livy almost in the form of ballads, though certainly rude in form and moving with prosaic foot. We find ballads, in one form or another, in almost every nation which has attained any considerable degree of social development. They differ widely in form, and not less widely in spirit. Taken as a whole they are valuable indications of the spirit of the nations amongst whom they have been produced. Some ballads have been made by regular artists, and are pieces of literary sculpture; others have grown up amongst the people, and are not so much the statues as they are children of the people. The latter are of course the most valuable of all as indications of national thought and feeling, even though they have but inferior poetic merit. They are the field flowers of poetry, -not so rare and exquisitely beautiful as the briefer songs, of love, of religion, which spring up in a poetic people as the water-lily and the fringed gentian, and by no means so nicely framed and finished off as the artistic creations of well-bred poets, the choice garden-flowers and exotics of the greenhouse, but yet, like the violets, the dandelions, and the wild roses, breaking the monotony of the landscape, and lending a certain charm to the common places of the world. A collection of all the popular poems which are in the mouth of the people would pretty truly represent the character of that people; at least, at the time when they were collected. The old Greek spirit of the heroic age is reflected in the ballads of the Homeric cycle of poets, as sharp and clear as the mountains and their clouds in the Lake of Geneva, of a still summer day. In the sombre ballads of Spain we find the superstitions, the gloom, and the fire of that nation. Their love, their patriotism, and their jealous sense of personal honour obtain here, perhaps, the fullest expression they have anywhere found in the national literature. The ballads of the Teutonic race express not less fully the peculiar character of the Danes, the Germans, and the English. Had we space, we would gladly pause awhile over the popular poetry-the Volksleider of the continental portion of the race, and give some specimens thereof, from Volker Babbulus in the tenth century down to the "The Song of the Three Kings of Cologne" in the seventeenth, not neglecting the artistic ballads of Bürger, Uhland, Schiller, and Goethe. The ballads of the English partake of the characteristic homeliness of the nation; of their manly good sense, their humanity not without a certain admiration of rough strength, of coarse pastimes, of gross eating and drinking. There appears likewise that strong tendency to individual freedom which marks all the movements of the Anglo-Saxon people. Their ballads delight in representing the man of nature as superior to the man of circumstances. All distinction of rank is occasionally broken through, sometimes in the most absurd and impossible manner. This characteristic appears eminently in "The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green," in "King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid," which under the title of "A Song of a Beggar and a King" was old in Shakspeare's time, for Moth, in the play, says, "the world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages ago." Then there is a strong moral sense running through the English ballads, as indeed it appears in most songs of the people everywhere. The popular minstrel loves to show how cunning is baffled by simple wisdom, and innocence proves too strong for crime; thus "the unnatural father" in the well-known ballad, falls into trouble, and is delivered by the son whom formerly he had spurned. Poetical justice must be done to the unworthy guardian of "the Children of the Wood:" "And now the heavy wrath of God Yea, fearful fiends did haunt his house, "His barnes were fired, his goods consumed, If a man is unjustly treated by the powerful, and especially by the government, the bard of the English people loves to tell how the innocent was rescued by force or stealth. The Story of Robin Hood "rescuing the squires three" is of this character. "Bold Robin Hood ranging the forest all round, O then did he meet with a gay ladye, She came weeping along the highway. "Why weep you, why weep you?' bold Robin he said." She answers that she weeps for her three sons, for "they are all condemned to die," who, it seems, have not com mitted the most ordinary offences. "What have they done then?' said jolly Robin, 'O! it is for killing the king's fallow deer, "Get you home, get you home,' said jolly Robin, And I will unto fair Nottingham go, For the sake of the 'squires all three.' "Then bold Robin Hood for Nottingham goes, O there did he meet with a poor beggar-man, "What news, what news, thou old beggar-man ? O there's weeping and wailing in Nottingham town, "This beggar-man had a coat on his back, "Come, pull off thy coat, thou old beggar-man, And forty good shillings I'll give thee to boot, |