ple were obliged to make their own music, or they had none. In our day it is done for us, and by talent and genius of the highest order.

The first collection of part compositions designed for social recreation was made by William Byrd in 1588. But the word madrigal not having been as yet anglicized, the work was entitled Psalmes, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadness and Pietie. In the "Epistle to the Reader," couched in that tone of quaint courtesy and stately friendliness which characterized the attitude of the writer toward the public, when the making of a book was a serious matter, and the preface was sure to bear more or less of the tone of an affectionate appeal, he says:

"Benign Reader, here is offered unto thy courteous acceptance musicke of sundrie sortes to content divers humours. If thou be disposed to pray, here are psalmes; if to be merrie, here are sonnets; if to lament for thy sinnes, here are songs of sadness and pietie."

Among the many quaint and beautiful things in this collection, Byrd set to music part of Sir Edward Dyer's poem in Percy's Reliques: "My mind to me a kingdom is."

|

Later he published a set of four-part madrigals and "ballets for five voices."

From Thomas Morley (1593) up to the time of the Stuarts, England produced a most astonishing number of madrigal composers, whose claim to distinction seems to rest equally between their talent as poets and musicians. Something of the degree of the culture and of the scholarship of that golden period may be inferred from the fact that of the innumerable madrigal writers of that day, some of whom produced compositions numbering among the hundreds, almost all wrote their own verse to their own music, the verse itself oftentimes clothed in the nervous, classical language of that era of poets-verse rich in most poetic conceits, and whose felicity of phrase is only to be equalled by the elegance of its form. Among such are to be named John Dowland, whose "Come again, sweet love," is full of such dainty beauty. John Wilbye's compositions place him in the very first rank, and perhaps one must read and hear his "Down in a valley" and "Sweet honey-sucking bees" to learn what a madrigal really is. John Benet's "Oh, sleep, fond fancy," is only surpassed by his "Flow, O my tears," which breathes the very spirit of tender melancholy; and there are few sonnets in the English language to equal Richard Alison's "There is a garden in her face."

Of the other renowned madrigal composers besides those already named are to be mentioned Weelkes, Michael Este, Thomas Bateson, Thomas Ford, and, perhaps more famous than all, Orlando Gibbons. Of all the English madrigal writ

Later, during the same year, a Mr. Nicholas Songe edited a collection of Italian madrigals translated into English, the popularity of which soon induced the publication of other Italian madrigals for four, five, or six voices. And madrigal singing soon growing into favor, and the love for it spreading among all classes, English composers finally turned their attention to this new style of musical composition. The first of English madri-ers John Wilbye and Orlando Gibbons gal composers whose compositions raised him at once to fame and eminence was Thomas Morley. His first contribution to the vocal part music of the time was entitled "Canzonets; or, Little Short Songs for Three Voices, newly published, by Thomas Morley, Bachelor of Musicke, etc., 1593." This collection was dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, sister of Sir Philip Sidney, of whom the composer says: "If her ladyship shall but vouchsafe them her heavenly voice, it can not but be that they will return so perfumed that the air will be made delightful thereby." These canzonets, which are masterly specimens of three-part vocal writing, are among the very few compositions of the day that are reprinted in modern days.

Wil

must be placed in the front rank. Their
compositions have stood that crucial test
of superiority, an undying popularity.
To-day their madrigals are still held as
models of style, and remain unsurpassed
for beauty and elegance of form.
bye's compositions perhaps offer a great-
er variety of range than those of Gibbons,
as the former essayed every style, and suc-
ceeded in all, passing readily from "grave
to gay, from lively to severe." But in
Gibbons there is a certain massiveness of
structure in the form, a richness, depth,
and tender seriousness of expression which
place his madrigals beyond those of any
other composer, not excepting those even
of Palestrina. An English critic thus
sums up the qualities of his genius :

"Grandeur is the essential attribute of | Since then, in her Church chorales, EngGibbons's writings; harmony in its most land's ballads, songs, etc., English commassive and majestic form is the instru- posers have produced many beautiful and ment that he wields; but his compositions noble contributions. But at no period are not less distinguished for the skillful has Apollo's lyre been struck with so feeltexture of their parts than for grandeur ing and impassioned a hand, or been of outline. They invite and reward the played upon by so inspirational a touch, close attention of the artist, while they as in those days, when Shakspeare's Jesimpress and delight the unlearned hear- sica, perhaps moved by the memory of the er." To modern music-lovers his best- beautiful madrigal music, could say, known madrigals are "The Silver Swan" "I am never merry when I hear sweet music." and "Dainty fine bird."

During the reign of Elizabeth there were many collections of madrigals made, but the most famous of them all was the one compiled under the supervision of the Earl of Nottingham, the Lord High Admiral. His lordship offered a premium for the best madrigal composed in honor of the queen. No less than twenty-two candidates appeared, and their compositions were published under the title of the Triumphs of Oriana. Wilbye, Weelkes, Morley, and Benet sent contributions, most of them being written for five and six voices. The theme of every madrigal was the same, and the burden of each, "Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana, Long live fair Oriana!"

During the reign of Charles the First an attempt was made by Henry Lawes and other musicians of the age to revive the art of madrigal singing. But already the musical taste had changed. With the introduction of the lute and harpsichord, and later of the spinet, vocal compositions became less and less the fashion. The madrigal had, however, already served its purpose, and was giving place to other forms of secular composition, to glees, to chamber cantatas, to songs, and the opera. In our own day madrigal concerts in England and in our own country are occasionally given. Sometimes, as has been the case in New York within the past ten years, some lover of that olden music will give a madrigal concert, and the hearers' ears be ravish

One of the most interesting features of this brilliant period in the musical history of England is the fact that all of this mad-ed with its quaint and charming rhythm. rigal music was characterized by the emphasis of a marked individuality. It was essentially English. Perhaps the very insularity of the nation helped to develop a certain freshness, an originality and vigor, not always to be found in the various national Continental compositions, where nearness of contact forbids that isolation so necessary to works of pronounced in dividuality. Excepting in her contributions to sacred music, England has never surpassed in point of excellence and beauty the songs of these madrigal composers.

But for the most part the choice of modern taste seems to lie with the more modern glees and part songs. Several modern composers have tried their hand at madrigal writing, some, as in the case of Cherubini, Donizetti, and others, merely attempting such compositions as exercises of musical style. But Leslie, of England, and Caryl Florio, of New York, have written many charming madrigals, the music and the words of which will even bear comparison with the classic perfection of Wilbye's or Weelkes's productions.

Editor's Easy Chair..
song

HE generation of New-Yorkers which has | Burney's stories and of other last-century Eng

derly calls "the first youth" has the advantage, among the other advantages enjoyed by those who are no longer young, of recalling the Ravels at Niblo's Garden. That familiar summer resort of older New York was at the corner of Broadway and Prince Street, the site of the present Metropolitan Hotel. It was a kind of Vauxhall Garden, and the reader of Miss

don gardens of that time if he knew Niblo's on a summer evening long ago. There was a broad hard gravelled walk, bordered with little arbors or wooden booths, with a dusky illumination of colored glass lamps-dim and damp little arbors, in fact, where it seemed very possible to get the rheumatism which you did not order as readily as the ice-cream or the sherry

cobbler that you did. There were pots of flow- | ers and tubs of lemon and orange trees, with other "sombre boscage"; and the whole place had the air of a simple, primitive, cockney pleasure-resort, and the Niblo generation took there a very honest and inexpensive enjoyment, to which sometimes, perhaps, the occupant of an opera orchestra chair at four dollars, and in full evening dress, somewhat ruefully recurs.

This lady was a niece of the Count Vergennes, who was minister of Louis XVI. during our Revolution, and her mother was a family friend of the Empress Josephine. When Madame De Beauharnais became the wife of General Bonaparte, and the First Consul established his court, Madame De Rémusat and her husband lived at the palace. Madame was the confidential friend of Josephine, and her diary was a daguerreotype of the intimate life of Bonaparte. He fascinated her, but she did not trust him; and when he returned for the hundred days she suddenly burned the manuscript lest it should be disclosed. Some years afterward she rewrote the memoir from memory, and it is this copy which is now published. It has the air of perfect authenticity, and there is no reason to doubt that it is substantially a reproduction of the original draft.

The Napoleon of this memoir is the figure that was evoked by the pretty play at Niblo's, and the one which is probably the true portrait. It is exceedingly interesting to compare the private narrative of Madame De Ré

But the charms of Niblo's Garden are not exhausted when we have mentioned the leafy tubs and the dusky bowers. These were but the retreats of the entr'acte. There was a summer theatre-a theatrical pavilion, so to speakopen upon one side to the garden, in which light and gay plays, or vaudevilles as they were called, were performed. But of all these performances the most popular and fascinating were the pantomimes of the Ravels. Summer after summer and night after night this family or company amused the town of thirty and forty years ago. It was a simple and delightful domestic entertainment. Father and mother and the children strolled out in the pleasant even-musat with the story of Napoleon in his public ing, and paying a modest sum, entered the de- | lightful avenue of damp little booths with the dingy colored glass lamps, and sauntered through it to the theatre. To the young eyes it was a kind of fairy scene, and when the curtain rose upon Vol-au-Vent or Jocko, earth haddetti Tedeschi of the peninsula, and who recall few more entrancing delights. It is to such early, unconscious moments that very strong and permanent impressions are often due, and it is almost ludicrous to say that it was from the Ravels at Niblo's that the Easy Chair acquired its first fixed conception of the hard and cruel character of Napoleon Bonaparte.

capacity, as described by Metternich in his memoirs, the early volumes of which are also just published. It is curious to those who remember the Metternich rule in Italy, the Spielberg and the hate of the Austrians, the mala

the terrible wish of Browning's "Italian Exile in England," that he might feel Metternich's "red wet throat distill

In blood through my two hands,"

to encounter Metternich's own account of himself and his motives. Joseph Surface was not more profuse in fine sentiments, or more con

There was a little play or pantomime which turned upon the grief of the Napoleonic con-scious of his conscience. The Austrian Chanscription in France. It was described in books, cellor treats us to his revelations with a fine and could be read and pondered if the young but rather dry official dignity. He writes in reader were so inclined. But upon this stage full court dress, and with the air of being, it became life. The boy saw with tearful eyes upon the whole, the most important personage the very misery of the parting. The ruthless of his time, and with a lofty patronage of monsergeant appeared in his hateful uniform with archs of every degree which is intensely amushis tyrannical file of soldiers, and the lover was ing. He throws, however, a great deal of side torn from his sweetheart and marched away to light upon Napoleon, and it is exceedingly enJena, to Austerlitz, to Moscow. Perhaps this tertaining, after following Metternich's own particular conscript in the play returned, and story of the great part he played, and of his rapturously embraced his dearest girl, and they extraordinary simplicity and honesty and delived happily ever after. But the young im-votion to principle, to come, at the very beginagination marched with the lover who came no more—hurried, mangled, into an unremembered grave, or stretched dead amid Russian

snows.

ning of the Rémusat memoirs, upon her remark that Napoleon despised sincerity as the sign of a want of superiority, and that in saying so one day he added, "M. De Metternich comes near to being a statesman-he lies very well."

"Cold on Canadian hills or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain; Bent o'er the babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The coarseness, selfishness, cruelty, and bruThe big drops mingling with the milk he drew, tality of Napoleon are all portrayed in this Gave the sad presage of his future years, book, and the impression is the stronger beThe child of misery baptized in tears." cause there is no intention to belittle him. A This childish impression of Napoleon is con- more supremely selfish man never lived, and firmed by the Memoirs of Madame De Rémusat, re- the closer the view of him, the more completecently published by her grandson, and made fa-ly is illusion dispelled. The dreamy, melanmiliar here in the "Franklin Square Library." choly "man of destiny" business, in the phrase

of the theatre, totally disappears. His rever- cial men thought it had a tendency to depreies were apparently meditations upon such ciate consols." But while the fat-witted spirit themes as the better way of murdering the ❘ of dullness is especially conservative, conservDuc d'Enghien. The halo of romance which atism has not, as it incessantly claims, all preceinvested him in some youthful imaginations dent upon its side. Antiquity and precedent of the last generation vanishes, and the gro- are all against it. History is the story of the tesque and foolish exaggerations of Gilray be- violation of precedents and the disturbance come almost reasonable as the real littleness of traditions. Conservatism finds no place to of the great Napoleon is unconsciously reveal- lay its head, because the story of the race is ed by Madame De Rémusat. that of endless movement. If the world had been willing to leave well enough alone, the world would have stood still. It is the human impulse not to be content with well enough, but to require the best, and hence mere conservatism or obstruction is constantly worsted.

When Sir Samuel Romilly proposed to abolish the death penalty in England for stealing a pocket-handkerchief, the law officers of the crown said that it would endanger the whole criminal law of England. When the bill abol

Metternich thought him equally great as a legislator, an administrator, and a soldier, and of the first rank in all the three departments. But however great, and in whatever way, the inadequacy of his genius is proved by his total overthrow. He had everything at command. Nothing was wanting but the will and the faculty rightly to use his enormous power, and he could have averted his own fate and blessed his country. He did neither. He died impotent, and cursed by nations. Madame De Ré-|ishing the slave-trade passed the House of musat's quiet gossiping tale of the imperial interior shows us why. The little forgotten play in the Niblo theatre on those pleasant summer evenings also revealed the secret. The meanest vermin may gnaw away the foundations of the stateliest temple. A cruel, absorbing, and despotic selfishness may bring genius and power and supremacy to naught.

Lords, Lord St. Vincent stalked out of the chamber, declaring that he washed his hands of the ruin of the British Empire. At the close of the reign of Charles II., when there were half a million of people in London, there was an angry opposition to street lamps. When Mr. Jefferson heard that New York had explored the route of a canal, he said that it was a very fine project, and might be executed a century hence. Sixty-nine years ago Chancellor Liv

weights four miles an hour was ingenious, but that the road would be neither so cheap nor convenient as a canal. When Rowland Hill proposed penny postage, Sir Robert Peel strongly condemned it as likely to involve a vast loss of revenue to the country; and it is only within the reign of Queen Victoria that the law has allowed mothers of irreproachable conduct, who from no fault of their own were living apart from their husbands, to have occasional access to their children, with the permission and under the control of the equity judges. Of course this abominable innovation was long and fiercely resisted by conservatism.

THE argument of conservatism is so constantly overthrown that its tenacity is sur-ingston wrote that an iron road to move heavy prising. The progress of civilization is over conservatism, and that progress is constant. Conservatism plants itself upon the established order. That has been tested; the new is untried; and while the old is not altogether satisfactory, who knows that the new will not be infinitely worse? Leave well enough alone, and don't lose the half loaf you have in trying to snatch a whole one, is the exhortation of conservatism. This argument, indeed, in all its forms, is forever disproved. It is brought ridiculously to grief. The Allopath of yesterday is the Homœopath of to-day, and Dr. Lardner crosses the ocean in the steamer which he had just proved could never make the voyage. But conservatism "comes up" bright and smiling, and the new Lardner is ready to prove that the steamer can never sail back again.

The depth and strength of the conservative instinct shows itself in the utter incredulity of prison reform, or of any reform of political The infinite series of discomfitures of its ar- administration. Conservatism diligently degument is rejected by conservatism as wholly nounced the proposition of Sir Stafford Northinconclusive and inapplicable, and each new cote and Sir Charles Trevelyan to abolish the inventor, or projector, or reformer, must, as it patronage of appointment to the civil service were, construct a new alphabet. It would be in England as ridiculous folly, sentimental instructive to cite, if it were possible to fill a statesmanship, and sheer nonsense. The clubs library of books with the recital, the illustra- smoked and sneered, and played billiards tions of the dull pertinacity of the conserva- and sneered, and read French novels and tive argument. It was the perception of it sneered, and shot pigeons and sneered. But which made John Stuart Mill assert that while while they sneered, the reform was accomall conservatives are not stupid, all stupid plished, and Lord Beaconsfield, the Prime Minpeople are conservative. Sir William Har-ister, the Oriental idol of the clubs, is comcourt, in a late speech, quotes Canning as say-pelled to explain in Parliament his apparent ing of the most conservative class in England: neglect to conform to the ridiculous folly. "The country gentlemen suspected wit meant Conservatism, which loves clubs, is equally something against the land, and solid commer- sure that all criminal reform is "bosh," or cant

VOL. LX.-No. 359.-50

the Irishman is quite as stoutly asserted as that of the American. Mr. Stedman, who is probably more familiar with Theocritus than any other American, doubtless considers and calls him a Greek poet, although Theocritus lived in Sicily and Egypt. Hawthorne was descended from Englishmen; he lived in what may be called an English community upon American soil; and he wrote in the English language. When he wrote a book about England, he instinctively called it Our Old Home, and the dis

and stuff. It is quite sure that wishy-washy | tinctive nationality of the Scotchman and of whining and snuffling over gangs of hardened wretches, who despise you for snivelling, is lost time; that thieves are thieves, and murderers murderers, and that's the end of it; and that all the mollycoddling of brutes and wretches is the namby-pamby wisdom of old women and country ministers. When there were two hundred and twenty-three capital offenses in England, Judge Heath said that there was no hope of regenerating a felon in this life. His continued existence would merely diffuse a corrupting influence. It was bet-tinctively American feeling among his readers ter for his own sake, as well as that of society, that he should be hanged.

doubtless responded. Indeed, the loyalty to the traditional and ideal England, the old England, was quite as strong in the colonies of New England a hundred years ago, and up to the Revolution was as deep and strong, as upon the island of Great Britain. No race is more deeply and strongly loyal in all its feelings than the English:

"Green fields of England, wheresoe'er
Across the watery waste we fare,
Your image in our hearts we bear,

Green fields of England, everywhere."

So sang the young Oxford scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, drawn by his sympathy and circumstances to the New World, but with his heart always fondly turning to the Old.

This is the familiar strain of the conservative argument applied to every proposition. But while it was directed at prison reform, Captain Maconochie at Norfolk Island refused to treat the worst criminals as other than hopeful human beings, with the most extraordinary results of peaceful prisons and personal reformation; and Sir Walter Crofton in Ireland pursued the same course, with the same results. These are but further illustrations of the old fact that conservatism steadily insists upon its old argument that the thing can not be done, while it is triumphantly accomplished before its eyes. It is not surprising, therefore, that the project for a female re- The truth is that there are two senses in formatory in New York is very repugnant to which the phrase "English men of letters" may this kind of conservatism, and that those who be understood. One may describe only those thought Captain Maconochie and Sir Walter who are born in England, and whose home is Crofton, and long before them John Howard, there, however they may travel; the other silly sentimentalists, should regard any change may include all writers of the English race in the established system as a dangerous inno- who write in the English language. The last vation. The best corrective to the skepticism would include Irving and Hawthorne as well which denounces the effort to separate the as Scott and Burns. English literature and sexes in penal institutions, and to prevent the the literature of the English language are not increase of hereditary pauperism, as hopeless phrases which describe essentially different and amiable folly, is a visit to a county jail. things, and nobody would deny that HawLet the people who sneer once see for them-thorne is a very brilliant name in the literature selves the interior of such an institution, and of the English language. its hideous fostering of vice and crime, as it was described in the very striking tale of Meg, in the "Library of American Fiction," and they will sneer no more. It is very easy to deride practical philanthropy as sentimentality. But it is no easier than to see that such derision is mere selfishness. The thorough and thoughtful treatment in New York of the vast practical problems of pauperism and crime would be a glory for the State quite as great and enduring as the Erie Canal or the Central Railroad.

MR. HENRY JAMES, Jun., has contributed to the series of "English Men of Letters" a volume upon Hawthorne. Some exception has been taken to the classification of an American author as an English man of letters. But there was no such objection to the volumes upon Scott and Burns, who were Scotchmen, nor to that upon Burke, who was an Irishman. They all lived under the British crown, it is true, and they were British subjects; but the dis

It has been objected, also, that Mr. James describes Hawthorne as provincial, and if the word is to be understood as meaning cockney, the objection would be weighty. No man could be less cockney than Hawthorne, but undoubtedly he was a New-Englander in the same sense that Scott was Scotch. The Puritan spirit had a singular fascination for his genius, but because his imagination invested local scenes and familiar objects with undying charm, he was no more local or limited in any narrow or inflexible sense than Homer in treating traditions of familiar places, or Scott in telling the tale of Rob Roy or the Heart of MidLothian. Just as the spirit of the London life of the last century is reproduced in Fielding, but by a creative genius, so the early Puritanism of New England lives upon Hawthorne's page more perfectly than in any history, not because his genins was in any small sense local, but because, like Fielding's and Scott's, it was creative. We do not forget, of course, that Hawthorne was more romancer than nov