school; the little school with its two dwarf
crumbling towers. I wonder how the doctor,
and his household, and his five-and-twenty
pupils, can be stowed away therein. My
wonder is not at the doctor. It is not he
who is an abuse; he is but one among four
thousand men, whose lot is cast among these
rotten places. Educated men and clergymen
are named as masters, with salaries
below their expectation. They are distinctly
told to help themselves, by taking private
pupils; and what they are distinctly told
to do, they do. It is a part of the contract
made with them when they accepted office.
The consequences of putting such men, upon
such terms, into these places, follow naturally.
A vivid and a painful picture of them is
presented here at Thistledown.

The afternoon has waned, and the October
gloom has deepened; and the gloom
which we have brought with us out of that
mouldered tomb of charity, strengthens
considerably the October influence. We walk
back to the railway station; there will not be
a train for an hour. Let us walk on three
miles to the train's next place of stoppage,
and wait there.

So we walk on through the dead leaves that
bestrew the narrow lanes, and having passed
a little village, presently, we see a mob of
children round a cottage gate; an adorned
cottage, larger than the grammar-school we
left, and like it clad with ivy, but with
clematis as well. Is it another school? No,
but a whole school is waiting at the gate;
children of all sizes, labourers' children
evidently—bits of the rough lot—but cleaner
far, and very far more child-like than the
weary little crowd, at Thistledown. Four or
five little imps are racing with each other, and
give us as they pass a joyous grin; a little
philosopher of five years old walks alone,
singing, and fires smiles at us out of his big
eyes as we go by. Around the cottage gate
are children of all sizes, from two feet to five,
and a gentleman with whom they seem all to
be on loving terms, is asking, "Whose turnout"
a cart may be, whose red and yellow
horse travels in leading-strings. Free and
fearless childish looks, and kindly childish
laughter play about us as we travel through
this sunny little cloud of life.

And we go on, and presently, by the
wayside, there is a cottage with nasturtium and
monthly roses blossoming about its windows,
and a woman—not young—neatly dressed,
leans over the gate, her head upon one hand,
and she is looking up the lane pleasantly,
pensively, her eyes upon the little multitude.
Very coarse her neat dress is, very refined the
look of love toward the children makes her
face to seem; to see her, in passing, lean
over the gate before her roses, tempts one to
look back upon the quiet picture; and then
we see, built up against her cottage, the clean
little school-house with its windows open, so
we know she is the village schoolmistress.
And we pass on, and presently an iron
torrent pours us back into the depths of
London.

ENGLISH SONGS.

WHEN Bishop Percy published his
"Reliques," in 1765, he found it necessary to
make an apology for introducing them to a
"polite age." The century was too artificial,
too "elegant," to be expected to like anything
so natural. We now recognise these barbarous
remains to be full of the finest and most
genuine poetry. "Sweet William and Fair
Margaret," as preserved in its old form by
the graceful-minded Bishop, is an infinitely
finer production than the "Margaret's Ghost"
founded on it by Mallet which the Bishop so
highly eulogises. All this is part of what we
may call the Second Revival, which began
in the early days of Scott; which has resulted
in the increased love for Shakspeare and
Spenser; which has reprinted Herrick; and
the essence of which lies in this, that it
brought back heart into our literature. I
often compare this movement of Europe to
the return of the Prodigal Son. Europe
sickened over its dry husks, and came back
to its parent Nature. Let us glance here at
the tracks of the wanderings of our native
English mind, since the point where the tracks
become clearly traceable.

Our old minstrels were undoubtedly a
privileged class. They sang at the banquets
of the barons, and were indeed the poets of
their age; plucking forth and illustrating
the beauty that lay in the acts of their generation.
What the old barons did in their fighting,
havoc-making lives—conceiving it their
due occupation—these minstrels endowed
with grace and attraction. It was pleasant,
of course, for a Percy, or a Douglas, to hear
the hunting and slaughtering adventures of
his grandfather, recounted with the magic of
music, made look so bright by the light of
poetic fire. The minstrel, with his gifts, was
undoubtedly a welcome visitor; and, indeed,
the great barons had minstrels of their own
in habitual attendance on them. We cannot
complain that our ancestors were without
musical taste. They had "serenades," for
example, in the days when our climate was
worse than it is now. I have no doubt they
were, what we should call, "coarse," rough,
from the very vigour of life they felt. Yet,
they had their refinements; they were extremely
fond of perfumes, not delicate, etherial
essences, but thick compounds, touching up
the sense with a vengeance. Undoubtedly,
they liked splendour and ornament—witness
only their armorial ensigns—and generally
must have loved the expression of beauty by
their minstrels, who revealed the highest
beauty to them, by the chant and the harp.
We need only remember how Taillefer came
singing up in front of the Norman line, at
Hastings; how Bloudel sang to the young