The birdman showed his bird-decoy so steady; Each little one that passed cried, "Do, pray daddy, In a wide booth there was a well-clothed board, Of jackets, socks, and trowsers very homely. His saucepans, gridiron, toasting-fork, and skillet; Here was the draper, with shalloon and cloth: This way is one with powder and white soap, The "If for eggs, fowls, pigeons, much thou carest, Then those with herbs and sweetest flowers came, &c. &c.' "The Meo Potacca, or Rome in its glory," a still greater favorite with the lower classes, in whose dialect it is written, is stated to display a great deal of humour, and to give the most correct representation that can be found any where, of the dress, manners and morals, pastimes and superstitions of the low Romans of the present day. The "Will of the Abbace Veccei" is a merry, rhyming, mock testament, in which the Abbate leaves different supposititious articles to his various friends and relations; e. g. To you I leave a club of might, 'Twill serve to guard your head at night; Besides of precious hams a chest ; And so,' we are told, the Abbate goes on, bequeathing a pair of stays stiffened with the bone of Jonah's whale; the tail of < Balaam's ass; the nail with which Jael killed Sisera; a measure of cinders half from Rome in Nero's burning, half from Troy; and a multitude of other sacred and profane articles.' But on account of the Author's irreverent enumeration of sundry papal curiosities, the poem is prohibited; and, as the natural consequence of such prohibition, it is in every mouth, being preserved by tradition, and lines of it are used proverbially every day. Mrs. Graham has abstained from giving any specimens of the various popular songs or hymns addressed to the Virgin or to our Lord, on account, as she states, of their bordering sometimes so nearly on the ludicrous, though sung in devout sincerity by the lower orders, and in other cases resembling so closely in the familiarity of their address the evangelical songs and hymns of late years printed in England,' by the Methodists. We regret that she has not enabled us to form an opinion respecting this very strange and remarkable coincidence. The poems addressed to the Virgin and the songs to the saints' we could dispense with; but if there are really extant any hymns addressed to our Lord, which may bear even a remote comparison to the exquisite devotional productions of Charles Wesley, for instance, they must be worthy of preservation. No harm could have been done by printing a few of these without a translation. Of the ballads, Mrs. Graham states, that the prettiest are those of the women who sell flowers or fruit, in some of which, different flowers are assigned to different persons and ages in a manner that recalled Shakspeare's Perdita. These, and a few of the amatory ballads, remind us of the simplicity and sweetness of Metastasio, and are quite a relief from the VOL. XV. N. S. E longer ballads of the robbers and outlaws. Some of the modern songs, such as the Lament of Napoleon for his Fall, and the Return of the Conscript, have a great deal of feeling.' In connexion with the popular poetry of the modern Romans, we should have been glad of some information respecting their music. Among the shepherds of the mountains, the bagpipe is the most common instrument. While the Author and her friends were one evening enjoying, on the summit of a little hill in the road to Capranica, the beauties of an Italian sunset, with Rome beneath them in the perspective, the distant sound of a bagpipe was heard among the hills. A young lad who was with them, said, 'That is most likely a shepherd from Abruzzo, or some of those wild Neapolitan places that harbour the outlaws.' This instrument has been introduced by some of the Italian masters, in pictures of the adoration of the shepherds; and Mrs. Graham states that, ♦ At Christmas-time, the pipers come down from the mountains to Naples and Rome, where they play about the streets, and especially before all pictures and images of the Madonna. They have one air, wild, and not without grandeur, which they believe to be that played at the birth of Christ by the angels, and which they perform on Christmas eve in the great churches, especially that of Santa Maria Maggiore, where they exhibit the presepia: i. e. a representation as large as life of an ox, an ass, Joseph, Mary, and the Divine Infant, in wax, under a bower dressed with branches, ribbons, &c.' A collection of the national melodies of the Italian peasantry, on the same plan as Thomson's collection of Scottish and Irish airs, would be highly acceptable. It might possibly supply some illustrations of the alleged foreign origin of the Scottish music. The identity of the instrument, would lead us at all events to expect in the music of the two countries a similarity of charac ter. A susceptibility of the Orphean charms of music and poetry, however, so far from necessarily indicating in the people whom it characterises either peaceful habits or refined manners, would seem to belong more peculiarly to the wild and lawless mountaineer, whose life is an alternation of intense physical exertion and absolute inaction. It is to fill up the languid pauses' of such a life, that the mind craves for some such excitement, and that the savage, who has no music and no literature, has recourse to the dance. When, therefore, Fletcher of Saltoun said, ' Let who will make the laws of a country, let me make the ballads, and I will form the people,' he said right so far as regards a country in the earlier stages of civilization, when the laws are necessarily weak, and the passions of the people strong, and a considerable proportion are occupied with pastoral employment. But, as the wild features of savage society are tamed down by the introduction of more regular and mechanical modes of life, and agriculture succeeds more and more extensively to pastoral occupation, and property becomes more generally diffused, the laws acquire a greater influence, and the ballads become a matter of far less consequence. There is neither the strong previous. excitement nor the leisure and repose, neither the flow nor the ebb of feeling, in the minds of individuals whose babits are, settled and domestic, and whose occupation is certain, which. poetry demands, in order to have its full effect on the imagination. In our own country, the ballad is now almost entirely superseded by the Newspaper. We question, however, whether our national poetry ever had an influence in forming the popular character, that would admit of a comparison for a moment with the sovereign and plastic power of the laws. As to music, God save the King, and Rule Britannia, though of modern date, are fairly entitled to the name of national airs; but all that we can boast of besides, is, our Psalmody. Music is with the English an amusement, but it is not, as it is in Italy, a language; nor does it supply to the lower classes in this country any deeper pleasure, than melody apart from all association is adequate to produce by virtue of the mere organic impression. We shall not stay to speculate whether they might have been the better or the happier had they been a little more essentially musical. Unfortunately, the English can neither sing, nor play, nor meet for any purpose, without drinking; and when men have got half-drunk, they care not what they sing or how they play :, musical sentiment is then at an end. Our climate is a great enemy, it is true, to out of doors pastime, but the grand barrier to innocent recreation is—drink. Civilization-there is no help for it makes sad havoc of all that is romantic in the circumstances of social man: it puts to flight poetry, music, and all that is either heroic or pastoral. But shepherds and banditti, the genuine natives of the Arcadia of every clime, though the most picturesque objects in poetry, are not the most agreeable of neighbours. Mrs. Graham informs us, that the banditti of the Campagna are always aided in their predatory expeditions by the shepherds and goat herds, a race of men apt for their purpose, as their half-savage life, while it gives them enough intercourse with the towns to procure food and intelligence, detaches them so much from all social bonds as to render them indifferent to the crimes of others. The observation (of Gibbon) that the pastoral manners, which have been " adorned "with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence, are much better "adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of military life," is confirmed by the manners of the shepherds of these mountains. Where the townships have land enough to employ the inhabitants in agriculture and gardening, as at Poli, the inhabitants are kind and gentle; and when an outrage is committed, the first exclamation always is, he who has done the evil must be an idle fellow, who had not patience to wait while his bread was growing. But Capranica, and some other mountain towns, which have little or no arable land annexed to them, while they supply their neighbours with shepherds, also furnish their annual quota to the ranks of the banditti. The observation of Gibbon, quoted above, though it concerns the wandering Tartars, is equally applicable to the shepherds of the Appenines, between whom and the wandering tribes of northern Asia there are some points of resemblance. • The unhealthiness of that great portion of Italy extending between the mountains and the sea, from the banks of the Arno to Terracina, renders it scarcely habitable during the summer months, and has forced the proprietors to adopt a system of management by which the lands in general only come into tillage every sixth or seventh year in rotation. Therefore nearly five-sixths appear barren during the summer, but in winter they are covered with flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of oxen and horses, which come down from the mountains, as soon as the influence of the bad air abates, to fatten on the luxuriant winter herbage of the low lands, particularly the Campagna of Rome. The mountain shepherds of course accompany them. Thus by a regular annual migration from the mountain to the plain, the ties to home, which form the most powerful securities for the virtue of the peasant, are loosened, and he becomes fitted for the wandering life and desultory habits of the outlaw. The same causes have worked the same effects in all countries, except, perhaps, in Switzerland, where natural and political circumstances have counterbalanced them. But the Spanish mountaineers, in the Guerilla war, displayed a spirit too like the banditti of the Appenines, and it is scarcely "sixty years since," the Caterans of the Highlands of Scotland might have emulated the brigands of Sonnino. The open trial for crimes, the rigid execution of the laws, and the politic measure of opening roads and erecting bridges throughout the Highlands, have freed Great Britain from the disgrace of harbouring such ruffians. But here, the trial is secret, the judgment uncertain, and the roads generally in such a state of decay, that the culprit may almost defy the pursuit of justice.' pp. 141-144. It would seem to be no very difficult matter for a wise and energetic government to abate the nuisance. During the short government of Cola di Rienzi, the country was wholly freed from robbers, and travelling became perfectly secure; but one of the first consequences of his fall was, the reassembling of the banditti. Sixtus V. also kept them under during his vigorous reign. And, at a more recent period, they were effectually held in check by the French military government. Tradition relates that the Pontiff carried his point by a daring stratagem. Disguised as an old man, he went himself into the woods with an ass laden with wine, and was seized of course by the robbers, who set him to turn the spit while they examined the wine, |