chorus of common melody? And why should the hypercritic turn up his nose at the idea originated by Prout of a grand "duo," composed of bass and tenor, the roaring of the bull and the croaking of the frog? Far less to be patronised was the late musical festival in Westminster Abbey, which "proved nothing." To return to Dr. Bowring. We have been quietly observing (not without concern for our national pride) the ludicrous exhibition he has been making of himself in sundry places over the way. Palmerston is a good cotton-ball in the paw of the veteran grimalkin here at home; but to furnish a butt for the waggery of every provincial town in France, in the person of a documentary doctor, is somewhat galling to our national vanity. Commissions of inquiry are the order of the day; but some travelling "notes of interrogation" are so mishapen and grotesque, that the response or result is but a roar of laughter: "solvuntur risu tabulæ." This doctor, we perceive, is now the hero of every dinner of every "Chambre de Commerce;" his toasts and his speeches, delivered in Norman French, are, we are told, considered the ne plus ultra of comic performance, especially towards The the close of the banquet. He is now in Burgundy, a most industrious labourer in the vineyard of his commission; and enjoys such particular advantages in that way, that the functionary on the woolsack is said to cast a jealous eye on his missionary's department: "invidiâ rumpantur ut ilia Codri." whole affair is indicative of that sad mixture of anile imbecility and frothy ostentation so perceptible in all the doings of Utilitarianism and Whiggery. Of these commissioners, one and all, Phædrus has long ago given the prototype : "Est ardelionum quædam Romæ natio Trepidè concursans, occupata in otio, Gratis anhelans, multùm agendo, nihil agens." So no more on that topic. 66 The publication of this Prout Paper on the Songs of France," is intended by us, at this particular season, to have a salutary effect in counteracting the prevalent epidemic, which hurries away our population in crowds to Paris or Boulogne. By furnishing them here at home with French diet and a literary fricassee, we hope to induce some, at least, to remain in the country, and to forswear emigration. If our preventive check" succeed, we shall have deserved well of the shopkeepers in London and of our own watering-places, which naturally look up to us for protection and patronage. Indeed, we are sorry to find the Parisian mania so visibly on the increase, in spite of the strong animadversions of Bombardinio, aided by the luminous notes of Sir Morgan. The girls will never listen to good advice "Each pretty minx in her conscience thinks that nothing can improve her, Unless she sees the Tuileries, and trips along the Louvre." No! never in the memory of REGINA has Regent Street suffered such complete depopulation. It hath emptied itself into the "Boulevards." We hope that our city friends will keep an eye on the Monument, lest it may elope from Pudding Lane to the "Place Vendôme:" for as to the preposterous idea of the Thames flowing into the Seine, we cannot yet anticipate so alarming a phenomenon, although Juvenal has recorded a similar event as having occurred in his time "Totus in Tyberim defluxit Orontes." But there is still balm in Gilead, there is still corn in Egypt. The "chest" in which old Prout hath left a legacy of hoarded wisdom to the children of men is open to us, for the comfort and instruction of our contemporaries. It is rich in consolation, and fraught with goodly maxims adapted to every state and stage of sublunary vicissitude. The treatise of the celebrated Boëthius, "de Consolatione Philosophicâ," worked wonders in its day, and assuaged the tribulations of the folks in the dark ages. The sibylline books were consulted in all cases of emergency. Prout's strong box rather resembleth the oracular portfolio of the Sibyl, inasmuch as it chiefly containeth matters written in verse; and even in prose it appeareth poetical. Versified apophthegms are always better attended to than mere prosaic crumbs of comfort; and we trust that the " Songs of France," which we are about to publish for the patriotic purpose above mentioned, may have the desired effect. "Carmina vel cœlo possunt deducere lunam; Carmine Dî superi placantur, carmine manes: Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim!" When Saul went mad, the songs of the poet David were the only effectual sedatives; and in one of that admirable series of homilies on Job, St. Chrysostom, to fix the attention of his auditory, breaks out in fine style : Φερε ουν, αγαπητε, της Δαβιδικης κιθαρας ανακρουσωμεν το ψαλμικον μελος, και την ανθρωπινην γοοντες ταλαιπωριαν EITWμEY, naι T. λ. (Serm. III. in Job.) These French Canticles are, in Prout's manuscript, given with accompaniment of introductory and explanatory observations, in which they swim like water-fowl on the bosom of a placid and pellucid lake; and to each song there is underwritten an English translation, like the liquid reflection of the floating bird in the water beneath, so as to recall the beautiful image of Wordsworth, talking of a swan, which, according to the father of "lake poetry," "Floats double-swan and shadow." Vale et fruere! OLIVER YORKE. Regent Street, 1st Oct. 1834. |