and with all haste held before the elders, or heads of the church, who cut a large portion each, and eat it with such greediness, that those who did not know them would think they were starved. They at all times prefer the raw meat to cooked victuals. After they have finished their brindo, as they call it, they take a little of the fattest parts of the cow, just warmed on the fire, to settle their stomachs, and then one or two large horns full of sevoir or beer, which is very strong and made of several sorts of corn. They then have the table brought in and covered with bread and cooked victuals, where those that are not satisfied with the raw meat, eat until they are of the cooked." Afterwards the lower class of priests and deacons are called in, and the raw meat or brindo is laid upon the bread, of which they cut and eat with as much eagerness (though quite cold) as their superiors did when hot. After they are satisfied, the third class are called in, and so on in turns until they devour all the bread and victuals, more like a pack of hounds than intellectual beings. When all is cleared away, the greater and middling ranks drink maize, until they begin to sing psalms or hymns, and at last get so intoxicated, that they at times quarrel and entirely lose their senses. Having proceeded thus far, we shall conclude our observations in a future Number. ON THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. PROFESSORS of Political Economy maintain that its first principles are as sure as those of the exactest sciences, and this perhaps is true in the abstract; but even the first principle of hydrostatics, into which all maxims of Political Economy may be resolved, is only true with reference to a certain state of things. Water will find its own level; yes, provided there are neither dams nor dykes to obstruct it. The admission of this law, then, must surely be as provisional in Political Economy as it is in hydrostatics. We consider the first of these sciences as an entirely new study-as the growth of the age; and so it is, and so it may well be; for its maxims are only practicable in such an age as the present: yet we commonly consider ourselves to have made some wonderful discovery, which our ancestors had missed. Under this impression, we consider the law which restrained the traffic of grain within the different counties of England, not suffering either export or import between them, as a perverse and barbarous prohibition. Yet it may be doubted whether our ancestors were as improvident in this, as we, their civilized successors, who have fish by land-carriage, are, in the plenitude of our wisdom, disposed to believe. Let us try this by something of a parallel text. I was some years ago in Sicily, a country whose state at that time perhaps agreed, with respect to its laws of domestic traffic, in some degree, with that of England at the period to which I have referred. I remember hearing the policy of the Government most bitterly arraigned at a mess of travelled English, in that it did not suffer the export of grain from one province to another, without an especial licence. Yet a considerate man might have found reasons for suspecting such a censure, in weighing the inconveniences of a free domestic trade in grain. For, first having premised that the sea was infested by the Algerines, and the roads often and long impassable from wintertorrents, we might suppose the case of one province having poured her plenty into the lap of another, with more regard to immediate profit than to her own future necessities. Now, without questioning a single principle of Political Economy, and believing that produce follows the demand as certainly (though not as regularly) as the waters obey the moon, he might ask how a reflux could have place, and how this wealth was to be remitted to the province that had drained itself, when the channels were all dammed through which it could only find its way. If it is, however, clear that the truths of Political Economy could only be verified in a very refined age, it is curious that they should never have been established in æras of civilization, nearly equal to our own. It is peculiarly curious that no light of this description should have broken in upon ancient Rome; since, though her high notions of honour and domineering policy might have led her to despise what at first sight may appear mere mercantile, and in her eyes, perhaps, degrading, considerations; yet her utter neglect of the science we are treating of was at variance with her own maxims of military policy, and may be considered as one main and immediate occasion of the ruin of Italy. I, of course, allude to the Annona lawsa code enforcing a supply of food at fixed prices; and, above all, the provisionment of the capital from distant and tributary provinces. We have a sad picture of the decay of Italian agriculture in many later authors, who, however, do not seem to have hit upon the cause. Now, it may be said, that in what I will call the heroic ages, the absence of husbandmen brought with it absence of soldiers. Lord Bacon well observes, in speaking of the protection of tillage by Henry the Seventh: "This did wonderfully concern the might and manhood of the kingdom: for it hath been held by the general opinion of men of best judgment in the wars, (howsoever some few have varied, and that it may receive some distinction of case) that the principal strength of an army consisteth in the infantry or foot; and to make good infantry, it requireth men bred not in a servile or indigent fashion, but in same free and plentiful manner;" and afterwards-" Thus did the king secretly sow hydras' teeth, wherefrom (according to the poet's fiction) should rise up armed men, for the service of this kingdom." It is, however, less surprising that the Romans should have been blind to the immediate or consequential effects of their sys tem, than that historians in an age like the present, which has indeed been styled the age of economists, should have so neglected a theme, which modern discoveries might peculiarly enable them to winnow and illustrate. Yet, strange to say, no modern historian of Rome seems to have watched the operations of this code, or sought to reconcile the seemingly contradictory effects which it produced; and though this is an unbeaten part of history, no one is disposed to make good that small and single portion of the field which remains to be explored. 0. NOISE. "Now learn, my sons, the wondrous power of noise." DUNCIAD, Book 2. : MAN is naturally a noisy animal. To make a noise is the only lesson in which Nature herself has instructed him and he is master of the art before he is even conscious of existence. High and low, good and bad, attain nearly the same proficiency in it. She recognizes no other patrimony in behalf of the most superior of all her works-she cuts off man with a shilling (the art or mystery of noise-making being apparently but of equally insignificant value), whilst she fortunes off the most profligate of her offspring-the wild-beasts themselves— with a rich and plentiful wardrobe, and, in a great number of instances, the fee of very considerable estates in land and water. Short-sighted sages mistake this gift of parental economy to man, as a piece of wrong-dealing on the part of Nature, accusing her of the partialities of a step-mother in the general administration of her family affairs. "Hominem tantum," says Pliny,* "nudum et in nuda humo natali die (Natura) abjicit, ad vagitus statim et ploratum." Man's inclination to make noise assumes the authority of a passion at his birth, and it prevails in every modification of humanity. It is equipollent in a state of nature, and in the capricious communities of artificial life. It is the appetite which fashion has not at any time repealed; and hitherto it has been safe even from the freaks of a fine lady. Philosophers seeing the force of the passion, have been beating about for an explanation:-one of them says that our love of noise proceeds from an instinctive aversion to our own thoughts, and that, if every wish we form could be analyzed, they would be traced, without exception, to that source. There may be reason in this; melancholy is the natural ally of meditation-joy, on the contrary, is made up of noise; it thunders forth in a cannonade of laughter, and exorcises the neighbour Prefat. Hist. lib. 7. + Paschal-Miseries of Man. hood round of pale cogitation and her pensive train. Signor l'Allegro's life is nothing but a round of visits from the member of the great family of noise. It would be impossible, and even if otherwise it would be useless, to number up the proofs of the force of this passion over the human heart. Even when "the senses are steeped in forgetfulness" we do involuntary homage to the goddess of noise; and like the Wogultzoi, that worship their idols by howling, acknowledge her supremacy in the most sonorous accents. The whole business of life is to make a noise in the world. The statesman sacrifices to it his health, and, not seldom, something that ought to be dearer. The professional man builds all his hopes on making a noise. It is the only point, I believe, in which the Whig and Tory agree and the British public" may thank the force of this passion over mankind, or they might go whistle for a parliament. It is not to be doubted that routs, rackets, and concerts, with all the other awful amusements of fashionable, life, had their origin in the universal passion for noise. But, alas! Lady Mary is no longer contented with the "sweet thunder" of the night---" still would her touch the strain prolong"---still must the compliant morning journal give back the dreadful din-- And in a low expiring strain Play all the concert o'er again. But, haply, should this creature of noise come forth from her Pandæmonium, what a stir it makes! I speak not of the "dreadful note of preparation" throughout the forenoon, nor of the civil war of carriage-wheels raging through the streets--these are pastimes to the awful rap of her bullying footman, which, like a " rattling peal of thunder," rouses the echoes in the mansion of some congenial clamourers. Well might the poet that delighted in fire-side enjoyments, set his ban upon all such doings, and fix his choice of a winter's evening in some retired social circle sacred from their intrusion. No rattling wheels stop short before these gates, Of sounding an alarm, assaults these doors The This, however, is the abuse of the passion. In the country the indulgence of it is carried to a very reasonable extent. rustic squire, condemned to a low diet on sound, far from the luxurious clamour of the metropolis, gives up his days to "fetching shrill echoes from the hollow earth." And when evening has called the child of Nimrod and his fellows to "halls of grey renown," the still unsated appetite for noise, victorious over all restraint, is heard in full-mouthed mimicry of "the music of the day." In short, the passion is known to survive almost every other inhabitant of the human heart. It stuck to the Greeks after their liberty and their love of liberty were gone. The war of the Romans, as every body knows, with the people of Achaia, ended in their subjugation, and of course the tender of their liberties by the victorious consul. A fine opportunity it was, no doubt, for the noise-loving cities.* They managed to have their fill of noise out of the thing, and left it there nec aliter illâ consulari sententia, quâ libertas Achaia pronunciabatur, quam modulutissimo aliquo tibiarum, aut fidium cantu, fruebantur. We are naturally much affected by noise. The power of music (which is essentially but noise‡) over the passions, cannot be exaggerated by poetry. There may be those who are dead to the concord of sweet sounds, but no heart can be indifferent to a loud shock of noise. The most awful sensations are created by the noise of thunder, of cataracts, &c. § and a man's mind may be so confounded by the shouting of multitudes, as that he will involuntarily join in the swell. Philosophers have endeavoured even to trace the universal acknowledgment of a presiding spirit, found in every state of man, to the impression of terror produced on him by the noise of the great convulsions of nature. || Cœlo tonantem credidimus Jovem regnare, is the opinion of Pagan philosophy. Some savage nations propitiate their gods by the noise of drums and trumpets. But noise is the poet's world, and he has celebrated its versatile influence. The effect of the sound of bells over the human heart appears to have been understood in the remotest antiquity. The High Priest among the Jews wore a little bell attached to his uppermost garment, and the sound was supposed to enliven the devotion of the people. The noise of bells was even thought to nourish the most amiable sentiments. Orlando introduces his appeal to the pity of the Duke by the following tender adjuration: If ever you have look'd on better days; If ever been where bells have knoll'd to church; The words of Florus are-quæ gaudia-quæ vociferationes fuerunt-quo plausu certavere ! + Florus, lib. 2. cap. 7. Waller thus addresses a lady singing: While I listen to thy voice Chloris! I feel my life decay; That powerful noise Calls my flitting soul away. § Burke on the Sublime. Lucretius, lib. 5. |