our ancestors. Sir John Hawkins gives a melancholy view of the opportunities furnished to the middle and lower classes of society in the latter part of the seventeenth century for the study and enjoyment of music. The nobility, of course, had private concerts of paid performers, as, to a certain extent, they had probably always been accustomed to. Then for classes lower in position we find a kind of public concert gradually growing into use, of which the chief manager was Mr. John Banister, but as to the people generally, it seems the major part of them were satisfied with entertainments given at public-houses and by performers hired by the landlords. He says, "There was no variety of parts, no commixture of different instruments; half-adozen fiddlers would scrape "St. Leger's Round," or "John, come kiss me," or "Old Simon, the King," with divisions, till themselves or their audience were tired; after which, as many players on the hautboy would, in most harsh and discordant tones, grate forth Green Sleeves," "Yellow Stockings," "Gillian of Croydon," or some such common dance tune, and people thought it fair music; but a great reformation was at hand, though everybody was astonished at the quarter from which it came." Mr. Charles Knight tells us all about it. "There was then to be seen walking through the streets of London a man distinguished from his rivals in the same trade-that of selling small coal from a bag carried over his shoulder-by his peculiar musical cry, by his habit of stopping at every book-stall that lay in his way, where, if there happened to be a treasure, it was sure to be caught up and purchased; and by his acquaintances, many of whom as they paused to speak to him in the street, were evidently members of a very

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different rank of society to his own. Ask any bystander you see gazing upon him with a look of mingled wonder and respect, who or what he is, and you are answered 'that he is the small coal-man who is a lover of learning, a performer of music, and a companion for gentlemen any day of his life. It was, indeed, Thomas Britton, the founder of popular concerts. Let us follow him home to his little coal-shed and house cheerily as he goes, where all traces of the business of the day soon disappear. An hour or two elapses, and he is in the midst of a delightful circle of friends and fellow amateurs exchanging sincere congratulations, paying his respects to new visitors, opening music books, and tuning his violin. These harmonious meetings, which began in 1678, appear to have continued until the death of Britton, which, it is painful to add, occurred through them. A certain Justice Robe was among the members, one of the vilest of social nuisances-a practical joker. This man introduced into Britton's company a ventriloquist named Honeyman, who, making his voice descend apparently from on high, announced to Britton his approaching decease, and bade him on his knees repeat the Lord's Prayer by way of preparation. The command was obeyed, and a few days afterwards the subject of it was lying a corpse, overcome by the terrors of the imagination thus recklessly and basely worked upon." Yet cruel as was his end, he has left behind him a name that "smells sweet and blossoms in the dust," for he was the pioneer of a great movement, and posterity must ever be his debtor for his noble though simple efforts to bring the delights of music within the reach of the people.

COCK-A-DOODLE-DO0.

THE immortal maxim of the ancient naturalists— "Omne vivum ex ovo," everything living sprang first from an egg-has its parallel precept in the moral world, and that precept may be thus defined - all sociable and political ethics are referable to the same grand source Cock-a-doodle-doo. As surely as you may trace the lineage of the oak to the acorn, so surely may you trace the fine springs of action in all departments of human enterprise to the same origin-Cock-adoodle-doo. Resolve philosophy to its elements; analyze heroism; reduce to their constituents the most romantic feats of chivalry and the most intrepid exploits of adventure, and what do they all come to? Cock-adoodle-doo. Whether among communities or individuals the same assertion holds good. The mystical and irrepressible delight that we find in crowing over one another was at the bottom of every war that has desolated the earth, and of every quarrel that has set friends by the ears from the dawn of creation to this day. Men and women have been described as unfeathered and biped." Yet have they wings, which to flap defiantly in one another's faces, to the jubilant chorus of "Cock-adoodle-doo," is simply the sweetest pleasure and the loftiest pride of which humanity is capable. Nations go to war for an idea-and what is that idea? Cock-adoodle-doo. France wanted to have the crow over Germany, and to that end plunged into a conflict the most fatally disastrous in the whole history of the Gallic race.

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There was a mighty "crow" over Saarbrück, but a still mightier over Sedan, only there the wrong bird was singing; the tables were turned and the Teutonic cock had the crowing all to himself. Well, Germany compelled her foe to bite the dust, in fact took all the "crow" out of her, and, not content with such bitter terms, seems resolved never again to allow her to wake the welkin with her clarion note. Poor France! What is to become of her? A "crow" is the dear delight of her heart, yet never again must she presume to indulge in the priceless luxury. Let her not attempt it, for no sooner shall she have expanded her wings and opened her beak than Prince Bismarck and General Von Moltke will be down upon her in fell swoop and compel her to "shut up" or hold her row," as Mr. Brown is wont ungallantly to phrase it when attempting to reduce Mrs. Brown to silence. There was a time when we English were as good" crowers as any on earth. Those were the good old days of prize-fighting and eke cock-fighting, when three bottles of old port was the regulation allowance for each guest at a dinner party; when it was an article of popular belief never to be called in question that one Englishman could lick any three foreigners, and when Lord Nelson laid it down as an indisputable maxim of logic that the only way for a Briton to argue with a Frenchman was to knock him down. It was a sweet thing in "crows," then, to boast that the sun never sets upon our empire-and, indeed, considering how seldom he rises upon our metropolis, the least he can do is to give us some compensation in the matter of setting, or rather of not doing so. Alas! the pity of it, but those also were the days when Britannia ruled the waves (though not very straightly), and when Britons

swore a deep oath never to be slaves. The bondsman setting foot upon our shores found his limbs growing mysteriously too large for his gyves, which, accordingly, were wont to burst asunder, leaving him as free as mountain-breezes. We no longer talk in that exalted strain. We brag no more about our national glory; but, intent on money-making, and on that alone, leave the game of "crowing" to poorer nations.

A wedding is a "crow "-a splendid "crow "-for the bride. As for the bridegroom, the less he says about it the better. His days of jubilation are over, unless, indeed, he be like Mr. Selby in Sir Charles Grandison, who, though vanquished every day by his wife, “still went on crowing with undaunted vigor." But the triumph of the bride is great, indeed, and greater now than at any former period of our history; for, if it is true, as statisticians assure us, that there are at present in England many hundred thousands of women, who, though marriageable, are unappropriated, how delightful must be the sensations of the woman who secures a husband while such myriads of her sisters fail to get one for love or money! That is indeed, a "crow" worthy of the name. So, too, is a birth; for Smollett observes with happy wit that when that event occurs in a family, there is not a woman in the house who does not look three inches taller in consequence. Here, again, the advantage is, as usual, with the ladies. It is all very well for the mother. She is entitled, sweet pet, to her maternal "crow," and much good may it do her!-but the father is simply an object of ridicule, in everybody's way, and a nuisance to the household. The whist-table is a fine arena for crowing. Unless, indeed, the regular gamblers who play "high," and go in for large stakes, no one