health. Nor is it neceffary, that fuch melodies or harmonies should have much intrinfic merit, or that they should call up any distinct remembrance of the agreeable ideas affociated with them. There are feafons, at which we are gratified with very moderate excellence. In childhood, every tune is delightful to a mufical ear; in our advanced years, an indifferent tune will please, when fet off by the amiable qualities of the performer, or by any other agreeable circumftance.-During the laft war, the Belleifle march was long a general favourite. It filled the minds of our people with magnificent ideas of armies, and conqueft, and military fplendor; for they believed it to be the tune that was played by the French garrifon when it marched out with the honours of war, and furrendered that fortress to the British troops.-The flute of a shepherd heard at a distance, in a fine fummer day, amidst a beautiful scene of groves, hills, and waters, will give rapture to the ear of the wanderer, though the tune, the inftrument, and the musician, be fuch as he could not endure in any other place. -If a fong, or piece of mufic, fhould call up only a faint remembrance, that we were happy the last time we heard it, nothing more would be needful to make us liften to it again with peculiar fatisfaction.

It is an amiable prejudice that people generally entertain in favour of their national mufic. This lowest degree of patriotifm is not without its

merit and that man must have a hard heart, or dull imagination, in whom, though endowed with musical fenfibility, no fweet emotions would arise, on hearing, in his riper years, or in a foreign land, those strains that were the delight of his childhood. What though they be inferior to the Italian? What though they be even irregular and rude? It is not their merit, which in the case supposed would intereft a native, but the charming ideas they would recal to his mind :ideas of innocence, fimplicity, and leisure, of romantic enterprise, and enthusiastic attachment; and of scenes, which, on recollection, we are inclined to think, that a brighter fun illuminated, a fresher verdure crowned, and purer skies and happier climes confpired to beautify, than are now to be seen in the dreary paths of care and disappointment, into which men, yielding to the paffions peculiar to more advanced years, are tempted to wander.—There are couplets in Ogilvie's Tranflation of Virgil, which I could never read without emotions far more ardent than the merit of the numbers would juftify. But it was that book which first taught me "the tale of

Troy divine," and first made me acquainted with poetical fentiments; and though I read it when almost an infant, it conveyed to my heart fome pleasing impreffions, that remain there unimpaired to this day.

*Milton's Penferofo.

There

There is a dance in Switzerland, which the young shepherds perform to a tune played on a fort of bag-pipe. The tune is called Rance des vaches; it is wild and irregular, but has nothing in its compofition that could recommend it to our notice. But the Swifs are fo intoxicated with this tune, that if at any time they hear it, when abroad in foreign fervice, they burst into tears; and often fall fick, and even die, of a paffionate defire to revifit their native country; for which reason, in fome armies where they serve, the playing of this tune is prohibited*. This tune, having been the attendant of their childhood and early youth, recals to their memory those regions of wild beauty and rude magnificence, those days of liberty and peace, those nights of feftivity, thofe happy affemblies, thofe tender paffions, which formerly endeared to them their country, their homes, and their employments; and which, when compared with the fcenes of uproar they are now engaged in, and the fervitude they now undergo, awaken fuch regret as entirely overpowers them.

* Rouffeau. Di&ionaire de Musique, art. Rances des vaches.

SECT. III.

Conjectures on fome peculiarities of National Mufic.

TH

Here is a certain ftyle of melody peculiar to each musical country, which the people of that country are apt to prefer to every other ftyle. That they should prefer their own, is not furprising; and that the melody of one people fhould differ from that of another, is not more furprising, perhaps, than that the language of one people should differ from that of another. But there is fomething not unworthy of notice in the particular expreffion and ftyle that characterife the music of one nation or province, and diftinguish it from every other fort of mufic. Of this diversity Scotland fupplies a ftriking example. The native melody of the highlands and western. ifles is as different from that of the fouthern part of the kingdom, as the Irish or Erse language is different from the English or Scotch. In the conclufion of a difcourfe on mufic as it relates to the mind, it will not perhaps be impertinent to offer a conjecture on the cause of these peculiarities; which, though it fhould not (and indeed I am fatisfied that it will not) fully account for any one of them, may however incline the reader to think that they are not unaccountable, and

may

may also throw fome faint light on this part of philofophy.

Every thought that partakes of the nature of paffion, has a correfpondent expreffion in the look and gefture and fo ftrict is the union between the paffion and its outward fign, that, where the former is not in fome degree felt, the latter can never be perfectly natural, but, if affumed, becomes aukward mimickry, instead of that genuine imitation of nature, which draws forth the fympathy of the beholder. If, therefore, there be, in the circumstances of particular nations or perfons, any thing that gives a peculiarity to their paffions and thoughts, it feems reasonable to expect, that they will also have fomething peculiar in the expreffion of their countenance, and even in the form of their features. Caius Marius, Jugurtha, Tamerlane, and fome other great warriors, are celebrated for a peculiar ferocity of afpect, which they had no doubt contracted from a perpetual and unreftrained exertion of fortitude, contempt, and other violent emotions. These produced in the face their correspondent expreffions, which being often repeated, became at laft as habitual to the features, as the fentiments they arofe from were to the heart. Savages, whofe thoughts are little inured to controul, have more of this fignificancy of look, than thofe men, who, being born and bred in civilized nations, are accuftomed from their childhood to fupprefs every emotion that tends to interrupt the peace

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