Perhaps, after all, there is a nobler music than what is commonly recognised as such; we mean "the music of speech," the music of a rich, varied, and expressive elocution. Man has not been able to contrive any instrument of equal power and versatility with that natural organ bestowed upon him by his Maker. The human voice is more complicated and exquisite than the great Harlæm organ, or the finest Cremona violin. It is the mastery of art to approach nature; but here we have nature above the imitation of art. We are old-fashioned enough to love good reading, which is much rarer than good singing. We have now-a-days few Duchets (the name of the clergyman of whom Writ wrote with such enthusiasm); and it must be confessed that, to the generality of clergymen, however learned or eloquent, or amiable for private virtues, the censure of Addison still applies, which was levelled at the slovenly, careless, and irreverent performance of the most sacred duty of the priest-Prayer.

XI.

MR. BRAHAM.

WHEN we first heard Mr. Braham in his opening Sacred Concert at the Tabernacle, we were sadly disappointed. We thought then, as we do now, that he overlaid the majestic simplicity of sacred music with a profusion of useless and unmearing flourishes, mere tricks of voice and execution, cadences, trills, and absurd repetitions. Wonderful power, the

* 1841.

more astonishing at his advanced age, and equally wonderful science we could not help acknowledging, but his pathos appeared labored and his enthusiasm mechanical. We did recognise a portion of the fine scorn Lamb spoke of in that magnificent piece, "Thou shalt dash them to pieces," wherein his contemptuous tones were jerked out with the same force that the fretted waves break and storm upon a rock in the raging sea. Afterwards at the theatre, on each occasion of our visits there, we were equally dissatisfied. The very indifferent acting was not relieved by any very extraordinary singing. It was the extravagance and (paradoxical, yet true) the constraint of the Italian opera. But a few evenings ago, at the Stuyvesant Institute, we at last discovered the secret of Braham's powers. It is not only the amazing extent, or clearness, or melody of his voice, nor the rapid execution, nor the brilliant expression merely, but (as in all men of true genius) it lies in the harmonious sympathy between the spirit of the man and the talent of the singer. He sang admirably, the noble heroic songs from Scott and Burns, not only because he sang with power, but also with love. He then and there sang out himself, to speak after the manner of the Germans. The honest, hearty, manly old strains, heroic or navel, or even moral, of England and Scotland, are the true songs for Braham to sing. Before we heard Braham, we fancied to our eye a sort of poetical High Priest in Israel, a majestic figure of a man uttering tones of unearthly depth and beauty, in a style austere, grand, and solemn. But Old Hundred was the only specimen of the kind Mr. Braham gave of himself to any advantage. To hear Braham in "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," or "The Blue Bonnets are over the Bor der," in which his frequent animated calls sound like the acute reports of a rifle; or "The Last Words of Marmion,"

**

where he displays the greater variety, from great force to fin e tenderness, slowness and vivacity, spirit and sentiment, we say, to hear these is to hear the finest singing that is to be heard at the present day. The rich philosophy and fine poetry of "A Man's a Man for a' that," was delivered in a proud strain, evincing the generous spirit of the singer. The hearty naval songs of old England are great favorites with Braham, He sings them with all the joyaunce of a jolly Jack Tar, that creature of impulse and heart, and with a spirit of defiance at fortune, and a manly cordiality of feeling, that smack of the children of the sea. Mere sentimental songs Mr. Braham sings badly. He has a taste and a faculty above them; he should "chaunt the old heroic ditty o'er," and leave Moore and Haynes Bayley to the lesser lights of the hour. He has force and elevation, but little of mere elegance or softness-he is the Jupiter Tonans, and not the graceful Mercurius.

XII.

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PHILIP QUARLL,

THIS delightful story, the favorite of the child's library about a century ago, has now fallen into almost entire obscurity, from which we trust a late London republication of the book may revive it. It is a designed and palpable imitation of Robinson Crusoe, the popularity of which led to a swarm of imitations, amongst which the above and the Adventures of Peter Wilkins are by far the most ingenious, and so full

of freshness and invention as to deserve to pass for originals. "The Adventures of the English Hermit" were first published, in chapters, in a weekly newspaper, called the Public Intelligencer, shortly after the appearance of Robinson Crusoe, which, in like manner, had been printed in a paper with which Defoe was connected. So we see our supposed modern fashion of continuing a work of fiction through successive numbers of a periodical is by no means so original a plan as we had supposed in the hands of Hook, Dickens, Marryatt, and a host of their copyists. Our own impression had led us to believe that Launcelot Greaves, Smollett's least admirable work, was the first English novel that had appeared in the pages of a periodical, but here we have a precedent a hundred years previous. Like Peter Wilkins, and Gaudentio di Lucca, the author of Philip Quarll is unknown. One who signs himself Edward Dorrington, a nom du plume, we suppose, is the apparent compiler of the book; but we have, now-a-days, seen revealed all the arts of publication, and know very well that editor often means an author who palms off his own writings as the lucubrations of other people. These scanty facts we glean from the preface to the late edition, and they afford all the actual information we have been able to collect on the subject. Dunlop is entirely silent, in his history of Fiction, as to the very existence of Philip Quarll, though he mentions Peter Wilkins with praise; in which said history he has finished the department of English fiction with comparative indifference and in the briefest manner.

To confess the truth, we have ourselves only a short time since met with the Adventures, and feel that we have, by so late a reading, been deprived of the pleasant retrospections to which the perusal of a book of this sort always gives rise. There are classic works which, if not read in early childhood,

lose their principal charm, which consists of a pleasure connected with early associations, such as are peculiar in themselves, and which no other period of our life may afford us. In this class of books we place all the fairy tales and voyages imaginaires, as Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Peter Wilkins, and Philip Quarll (Gaudentio di Lucca is the single book of the kind above a mere childish imagination, but worth a text-book on ethics for the boyish youth). Pure allegory is best relished then. We read Pilgrim's Progress with constant delight before the age of ten years, but have never been able to get through five pages since; and the Holy War we give up in despair, being quite past relishing the glories of that mortal combat between the Flesh and the Devil. Oriental tales, as the Arabian Nights and Persian Tales, are very captivating to a fancy delighted with gaudy pictures, and a taste adulterated by the crudities of ignorance; so, too, for a different reason, are startling matter-offact relations-as the adventures of Munchausen or Baron Trenck. All of these are really beneficial to young minds ; but the class of books we consider most useful for children are combinations of books of adventures and matter-of-fact relations, as Quarll's adventure, where a child is not only impressed with generous sentiments, and taught to follow a manly model of character, but also learns, and in the pleasantest manner, something of geography and of natural history. A book like this is better than a sermon or a moral lecture, for with delight it instills truth, and gives an impulse to the affections, while it stimulates the perceptions of the understanding.

To instruct children to advantage, we must charm their imaginations and touch their hearts; through these avenues we excite the natural piety instinct in the most fallible of