From The Spectator.

IRISH SONGS WITHOUT WORDS.*

heard in all our strects, accompanying the departing steps of our soldiers now in the East. Lough Sheeling" has a C sharp several times Most lovers of the national music of Scotland introduced, to accommodate the tune to the modare acquainted with the collections of the Melodies ern key of D minor; whereas the flat seventh in of that country published by Messrs. Wood of Ed- a minor key is a very characteristic note in Scotch inburgh. They are three in number: "The Songs and Irish melody. In "Cruiskcen Lawn." the of Scotland," The Melodies of Scotland without chromatic ascent from F natural to F sharp is a Words," and "The Dance Music of Scotland." thing unheard-of in this kind of music; and the All of them have been noticed in this journal with whole version of the air is not so good as that in merited commendation. They are carefully and general use, which is given in the appendix. judiciously edited; contain much interesting mat- Paddy O'Carrol" is weakened by the second F ter in comparatively narrow compass, and at com- in the first bar, instead of E, the most characterparatively small cost; are handsomely brought istic note in the tune. "A lovely lass to a friar out; and, above all, derive a peculiar literary came," a most beautiful air, is sadly injured by value from the introductory dissertations and the four monotonous closes on the key-note; the copious notes of Mr. G. F. Graham, whose learn- close in the middle of the second part ought to ing, research, and extensive knowledge have have been on the dominant. In some other inthrown much light upon the antiquities and char- stances, the editor has followed his brother collecacteristics of the national music of Scotland. tors in altering notes in the airs so as to make them more susceptible of modern harmony; but, those alterations are neither so many nor so material as those made by Stevenson in his arrangement for Moore. Mr. Surenne's basses and harmonies are skilful, judicious, and musicianlike; and this instrumental dress, in which he has clothed these pretty tunes, is very elegant and becoming.

To those publications the present is a sequel. Apparently, the publishers have not thought it expedient to bring forward a new collection of Irish songs-with the music, that is to say, united to poetry; that field having already been occupied by Moore. This collection, like the Scottish melodies without words, is entirely for the pianoforte player. It is exceedingly agreeable to lovers of music, albeit they do not sing, to be able to Mr. Graham's share of the work consists of his enjoy the beauties of popular vocal melody introductory Dissertation on the Music of Irethrough the medium of the piano; and so much land. Like his previous essays of the same kind, is this felt to be the case, that all our favorite it is full of curious and interesting matter. We operas, published without the words, are now in universal use. To edit a collection of national tunes, however, without words, is much more difficult than to edit an opera in the same way. The opera air is fixed and determined, and its harmonies are sufficiently indicated by the composer; but a national tune, handed down by tradition, assumes so many forms at different times and in different places, that is is impossible to determine its "set" by any positive authority. We must endeavor to find the set most generally adopted; and, where this is insufficient, we must decide between different forms to the best of our taste and judgment. All the collections of Scotch and Irish airs, even the most modern, differ widely in their sets of many melodies; and, though we may prefér one to another, it is difficult to assert that the one is right and the other wrong.

In examining this new collection of Irish airs, it seems to us that Mr. Surenne has on the whole shown good taste and judgment in regulating the text of melodies, as well as in their selection. The volume contains two hundred and twenty-three; and we do not find that any noted or popular air is missing. The editor says that" the sets of the airs are given after an attentive examination and comparison of those contained in the collections that have been published at various times in England, Ireland, and Scotland." In doing this he has generally chosen well, but, we think, not always. "The girl I left behind me "has a less spirited close than the tune we have so lately

*The Songs of Ireland without Words; for the Pianoforte. Arranged and edited by J. T. Surenne. Published by Wood and Co., Edinburgh.

can only indicate the topics which he has so ably and acutely handled. His remarks on the labors of Bunting, the most voluminous and celebrated among the older Irish collectors, are particularly valuable. Giving Bunting due credit for what he has achieved, Mr. Graham exposes his faults and errors, which arose chiefly from his overweening vanity. Bunting maintains that the oldest Irish tunes have been handed down unchanged for centuries, and asserts that his collections exhibit these tunes in their pure unchanged forms; a doctrine and assertion at variance with the fact, and inconsistent with what has been said by Bunting himself. Mr. Graham, however, concludes his strictures by saying "These remarks do not infringe upon the praise justly due to Bunting's industry and enthusiasm,-qualities which enabled him to rescue from oblivion many of the finest melodies of Ireland, and thus to add a peaceful and beautiful wreath to the honors of his native country."

Mr. Graham's remarks on the peculiarities of structure which are found in Irish melodies, though he does not profess to discuss the subject fully, are very instructive to the musical student. These peculiarities (common to Scotch and Irish music) have been explained on too narrow grounds. Because many old tunes want the fourth and seventh of the scale, theorists jump to the conclusion that these omissions are essential features of old Scotch and Irish melody, in the teeth of the fact that the notes in question are found in multitudes of tunes undoubtedly genuine. Mr. Bunting reduces the peculiarities of Irish tune to a still narrower compass; they are all owing to the use of the major sixth. This," ho says, "it is that stamps the Scotic character

(for we Irish are the original Scoti) on every bar | Graham,-that the melodies in question are not of the air in which it occurs, so that, the moment formed upon one but on a variety of scales, those, this tone is heard, we exclaim, that is an Irish namely, of the ancient Greek modes, preserved melody!" Now, the use of the major sixth, as in the old chants of the Romish Church. And an emphatic note, certainly gives a character it is easy to see how it came to be so: the people, to some Irish airs, but this is not peculiar to constantly accustomed to listen to the chants of them. "If," says Mr. Graham, " the marked oc- the church, naturally used the same kind of cancurrence of the major sixth of the scale is a sure tilena in their secular songs. and characteristic test of genuine Irish melody, then by parity of reasoning, the marked occurrence of that same sixth in the melodics of other nations may be used to prove those melodies also to be of Irish extraction." The sound view of the matter is undoubtedly that adopted by Mr.

Much curious information is given respecting the instruments used in the British islands in the middle ages, and upon other topics connected with Mr. Graham's inquiry; and his essay is an important addition to our stock of musical literature.

BULLION IN THE BANK. To the Editor of the Economist. SIR,In your money article of the 11th inst., commenting on the Bank-of-England Return, you very naturally mention that the decrease of bullion is the reverse of what was expected from the late large arrivals."

In the Times, and some other journals, this unexpected diminution in the bullion forms also the subject of observation. In the present feverish condition of the money market, this apparently incomprehensible drain occasions all sorts of mischievous surmises; and; coupled with the further advance in the price of grain, and the serious but glorious events in the Crimea, a sufficient handle is furnished to the Bears to depress Consols very perceptibly.

HOMOGRAPHY.

Sto

HOMOGRAPHY is a new art, an art of yesterday, or rather of to-day, for which the inventor makes the following extraordinary claims: Whoever possesses a printed book, possesses the stereotype plates of that book; whoever has an old lithograph, a copy of an extinct edition, an impression of transfer, the original stone, the original type, of a steel engraving, has by a wonderful process the original plate, the original block. An octavo of 500 pages can be executed at a trifling cost, in six days. Reprints cost but half the price of the first composition; and engravings, after expensive originals, may be made for a few sous. reotyping will be done away with; the first edition will be printed from type, and any one copy furnishes the plates for all successive editions. Rare editions are annihilated, as one copy may This enigma is, however, easily solved. The be multiplied to infinity, and that, too, with all Scotch term of Martinmas fell on the 11th in- the typographical peculiarities of the epoch in stant, when it behooved the banks to have re- which it was first printed. Books in foreign lancourse as usual to the coffers of the Bank of Eng- guages, in dead languages, in Hebrew, in Greek, land, for a large supply of gold, to meet the peri- in Sanscrit, may be reproduced by workmen odical expansion in the circulation, consequent completely ignorant of them. The following is on the increase which takes place in the transac- the history of the process, as described by Victor tions at this period of the year, just as regularly as the season comes round.

Meuieri, the scientific feuilletonist of the Presse.

The inventor, Mr. Edward Boyer, a chemist The gold taken from the Bank of England to of Nismes, undertook to solve the problem that meet this temporary excess in the circulation of the inventor of lithography, Senefelder, of Muthe Scotch banks, cannot have been less than nich, sought in vain to solve to reproduce £500,000. What a different aspect might mat- upon stone any typographical work, lithograph, ters have had, if the last Bank Return, in place or engraving, of which a single copy is in exist of a decrease of £50,000, had shown an increase in the bullion to the extent of £450,000.

ence to do it instantaneously, cheaply, without damaging the original, and so exactly that the This tampering with the resources of the Bank most practised eye cannot tell the difference; happens now, as it has happened before, at a and, finally, to multiply the copies to infinity. critical juncture, engenders distrust, aggravates In principle, M. Boyer arrived at a solution in the prevailing feverishness, and confers no addi- 1844; he has spent ten years in researches tendtional stability on the Scotch banks by this tem- ing to simplify, cheapen, and render practicable porary acquisition of gold. This state of things the process. He has now succeeded, and ste should evidently be altered. The remedy is plain: reotypes a quarto page in ten minutes, as extend the authorized issues of the Scotch banks he actually did in presence of M. Mennier. A to a sum equivalent to the average of their circu- cast of the Temptation of St. Anthony, which lation for six weeks succeeding the money terms lately cost a Paris publisher $280, might have of Martinmas and Whitsunday. Practically, this been furnished by M. Boyer for two cents and a would remove the present absurdity of keeping quarter! half a million in gold suspended betwixt London, The process is of course a secret, and will not Edinburgh, and Glasgow twice a-year, and, theo-be disclosed even in specifications for a patent. retically, would furnish a limit for the circulation M. Boyer does not intend to patent his invention; in every respect as unobjectionable as that ob- he will control and superintend the business in tained by the plan adopted by Sir Robert Peel. France, and will sell the secret to foreign Nov. 15, 1854. J. countries.

From The Economist, 18 Nov. CALIFORNIA.-AGRICULTURE AND TRADE.

We learn from California by the last arrivals, as we have in fact before heard, that agriculture is making great progress in that new habitation of civilized man. The New York Shipping List of the 1st inst. says:-

be quite as creditable as any of which the older States on the Atlantic slope way legitimately boast. The capacities of her soil for farming purposes, we sometimes think, approach the fait is by the most impartial and competent aubulous; but the fact is indisputable, attested as thorities-that breadstuffs enough may be raised in California in a single season, with average good weather, to feed, not only her own numerous and rapidly multiplying population, but the teeming communities on the adjacent coasts.

The world has known California, hitherto, as but the "El Dorado" of the Pacific, the modern Something of the same kind is going on Ophir, providentially ordained to supply all in Australia. South Australia is becoming mankind with the precious metals-in short, as a great agricultural country; Tasmania is a spot on earth's surface, predestined, probably, not behind; and, now that the gold fever has to attain no higher rank than that which has been assigned to States and communities exclu- somewhat abated, the people of New South sively devoted to the comparatively low level Wales and Victoria will return to their pastoof mining pursuits. ral and agricultural pursuits, which, exclusiveA nobler and more honorable destiny, it is ly, a few years ago, were the sources of their now clear, is in store for our sister State. Her rapidly accumulating wealth. The mining age of gold is sensibly fading away before the and town population, as their occupations dawning of a new and better era, in which ag- become less lucrative and as their numbers riculture and the arts are to lay a deeper, broad- are swollen by emigrants, will overflow on the er, more enduring foundation for her future land, and the pursuits of agriculture giving greatness, than any it were in the power of mere them necessary subsistence, will engage their gold and silver to provide. During the few years which preceded the dis- attention. Already California provides a large covery of her mineral wealth, it is no violation part of her own food, and Australia, which of truth to assert that California was wholly ne- latterly has also derived considerable supplies glected, because of the entire ignorance existing of breadstuffs from the States, will soon prowith regard to her real riches. The all but uni-vide them for herself. They are too bulky versal excitement of which that remote region to be imported from the Antipodes when there was at first the common centre, however, is now, is an abundance of soil to supply them. Now, as we have intimated, substantially at an end. this change, which is clearly seen to be the Our new State is just beginning to discover consequence of the natural progress of the that she has, in an almost prodigal abundance, the means to feed and clothe herself, and need people of both countries, will relieve the Eastern States of the Union from the demand of not, therefore, of necessity, be so large a customer to South America, to the Atlantic States, these countries for breadstuffs, and more will and to Europe even, as she has been, and is at be available for Europe. The gold discovepresent, to their enrichment and her own propor-ries have not only helped to stimulate industionate impoverishment. Her gold mines, it is try and consumption in Europe, they have also true, are as prolific as ever; but then the truth seems just beginning to break in upon her social and political economists, that gold gotten there, if paid away for food brought all the way from Chili or the Atlantic cities, in vessels that have to be roundly remunerated for bringing it to their doors, does not yield so handsome a return for the labor and expense of unearthing it, as would Another change worthy of notice is obvithe same labor and expense devoted to the cultiva-ously in progress. We adverted last week to tion of the soil, and producing, instead of gold-the immense number of Germans who now wheat, corn, oats, rye, and other cereals. An en- emigrate to the United States, and will there terprising people, thrown, as it were, on their become more powerful food producers than in own resources, like those of our countrymen who their own country. They will help to supply have settled down on the distant shores of the the wants of Europe. This large immigration Pacific, are never slow to act out a new idea, if continues. At the same time a severe check the idea is a practical or practicable one. Hence, has been given to the trade of the United within the year or two past, a harvest in Califor- States, to the progress of railway making, to nia is come to be regarded as something not wholly a solecism. coal and ore getting, and to manufactures. We are regaled almost every arrival now, with None of these is now so profitable as it was, glowing accounts of the immense crops of wheat and the check given to manufacturing and that have been raised during this season in vari- commercial pursuits, combined with a high ous sections of the State, while the yield of corn price of agricultural produce, will direct a and oats, with the smaller products of the field more than usually large proportion of the emand the garden, are represented, on all hands, to igrants to agricultural pursuits. The railways

caused a stream of people, and of food for them, to flow from the resources of the older States; these will speedily be so far changed, that the stream of people will still flow on, but it will be to create there food for themselves and others.

already made have opened up great districts a more extended scale, the high price which to the plough, have made them convenient of is general in Europe, and which extends to access, and have brought them comparatively the United States, will everywhere induce an close to a large market, where there is a lively extension of cultivation. We shall only reand a continual demand for agricultural pro- quire to wait the return of one or two seasons ducts. A greater proportion, therefore, of to find our supplies of breadstuffs greatly inthe enterprise of the Americans will be this creased and the prices greatly reduced. The year and the next, and probably for some progress noticed in California of an extension years, directed to agriculture than of late. As of agriculture from an extension of mining low prices and small profits naturally drive operations, is a representation of what is nat men from any particular business or prevent urally going on throughout Europe and Amerthem from engaging in it, so high prices and ica. The increase latterly of a town population large profits naturally attract them to the busi- by the extension of trade, is causing a high nesses where they can be obtained. The high price of agricultural produce, and agriculture price of wheat now induces the farmers to sow will be extended in Europe as well as in Calmore in England, and, in like manner, but onlifornia.

tinental purposes. In this country, prejudice, OUR BILL FOR THE LAST WAR. and especially Royal prejudice, was engaged, THE Parliamentary paper just issued by the but the interests to be served, the personal purTreasury on the motion of Mr. Hume, exhibit-poses to be secured, the military objects to be ing the loans, subsidies, and other advances to attained, were those principally of the French, foreign states, from 1793 to 1853, is a useful me-Prussian, Austrian, and Russian, Royal Fami morandum; but it is one that, taken by itself, is lies; and the larger part of our expenditure was calculated to have an effect the very opposite to laid out to obtain those objects and purposes. that intended. Strict commercial men may be Unlike many other kinds of exports, a very dismayed at the expenditure of so much as 64, large part of this money positively went to the 000,000l. in the wars of other states; may be as- Continent, without commercial return. Quite tounded at the repayment of only 620,000l.; and independently of any question about "the balmay be confirmed in their anti-military opinions ance of trade," therefore, we may safely say, that by such an array of figures. Others, less careful, the larger portion of that immense sum of may feel relieved that the whole amount of sac-money, towards which we are still paying, and rifice was only 60,000,000l.—not more than the shall pay for uncounted years, was sacrificed for gross of a year's income; and almost all of the loss foreign purposes. was before 1816-more than a generation ago, What is now our repayment? We find that we, in the days of our forefathers, when they were expended the larger part of that enormous sum not so wise as we are now. It is a bad debt, to set up, in Paris, an antiquated monarchy, easily forgotten, except as a matter of curiosity. which could not keep its own place, it was so But the direct payments incurred by the war, totally repugnant to the state of the time and in the form of loans and subsidies to foreign country; and that the permanent result of our states, were not all that we expended. We do effort has been to strengthen our arch-enemy, not here allude to more than a million and a and to establish that system by which he has half given in arms and clothing, provisions and gradually been rendering our allies his vassals. stores, to countries which, like Austria, Prussia, The object of the war expenditure was to estaband Russia, might have been supposed to be lish monarchy, non-constitutional, according to above aid of that kind. It would be an outra- the old "rights of monarchy;" and we have the geous under-statement, to reckon the sacrifice of reward of our infidelity to our national faith and our money to foreign states, at 50,000,000l. or standards. The subsidies are the smallest part 60,000,000l. It is, indeed, difficult to get at the of the bill; the new war expenditure is a reopenexact sum, but we can approach it, and to a cer- ing bill; but the money cost, large as it is, might tain extent estimate its enormity. During the be dismissed as dross, if we must not add to it, ten years, between 1803 and 1814, our govern- also, the blood, the misery, and the shame, that ment war expenditure exceeded 800,000,000l.; we have expended to established that false sysbut even that does not represent the sacrifice.-tem, against which we, ourselves, ⚫are now With that expenditure, we ran largely into debt. obliged to join in conflict. Grant that Pitt set the fashion of borrowing at extravagant rates, and only redeemed his credit, as a financier towards the close of his life; grant that foreign states could not be answerable for our wasteful modes: still we must confess, that a heavy balance of the debt towards which we annually pay some 26,000,000l., or more, in the shape of interest, must be set down to that war, and, consequently, our annual payments of interest on the national debt equally belong to that privileged period.

Now, that war was designed mainly for Con

It has been our custom to consider foreign states only as "officially" represented; we did so throughout the old war: now we may learn, not only how much safer are constitutional states, with regard to the internal peace and welfare of their inhabitants, but how much safer they are as neighbors. Stronger to repel, they must be slower to attack; and they are more frank in the declaration of their purposes, whether in peace or war. We have worked out the moral of an old mistake of which the future should present the reverse.—, -Spectator, 25th Nov.