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puppet, jerked into antics with strings mostly of a three-penny value, and with a single eye upon the crowd through which the hat is passing,

British Jacobites were pot,
And loyal British kettle,

Equal morally, if not

Men of equal mettle *

The majestic beauty of the music of "God Save the King" has won it a singular distinction which is quite inconsistent with one of the functions of a national air. It has been adopted for the national hymns of Prussia, Hanover, Weimar, Brunswick, and Saxony; so that its distinctive nationality is no longer in its music, but only in its poor, perverted, rebel-born words.

* See the following stanza in Punch upon "The Run from Manassas Junction."

"We for North and South alike

Entertain affection.

These for Negro slavery strike,

Those for forced protection.

Yankee Doodle is the pot,

Southerner the kettle,

Equal morally, if not

Men of equal mettle.

And so slavery and a high tariff are now equal morally in John Bull's eyes! The admission of what the whole world more than suspected has come at last. Its candor, not to say effrontery, gives it some claim upon admiration. And is it thus that Britain stands confessed before us! Britain indeed; but, alas, how much changed from that Britain who decked herself in the spoils of slavery, and hurled the fires of consuming vengeance upon the inhuman fleets!

IV.

The history of the other great national hymn of the world, the Marseillaise-for these two separate themselves by eminence from all the others-is noticeably and significantly unlike that which has just been examined. Every reader of this little book may not know all the brief history of that marvellous song, which is almost travestied in Lamartine's sentimental melodramatic account of it in the Girondins. It received its name from the men who first made it known in Paris, the ruffian Marseillais -a horde, some five hundred strong, of the vilest and most brutal of the floating population of a Mediterranean sea-port town, who were summoned to Paris by Barbaroux for the purpose of exciting and assisting at the atrocities of 1792. Headed by the wretch Santerre, they marched into Paris, and through its principal streets, on the 30th of July in that year, a band of swarthy, fierce, travel-soiled desperados, wearing red Phrygian

caps wreathed with green leaves, dragging cannon, and singing as they marched, a song beginning:

"Allons, enfans de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous, de la tyrannie
L'etendard sanglant est levé.

Entendez vous dans ces campaignes

Mugir ces féroces soldats!

Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes!-

Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!"

These inflaming accents were just suited to the intense craving of the morbid appetite created by the revolution; they at once stimulated and gratified, though they could not slake it; and on that day Paris drank in with greedy ears an intoxication from which, in spite of certain seeming intervals of imposed restraint, she has been reeling ever since.

But who had done this? Not a Marseillais, not a sans-culotte, not even a revolutionist. Rouget de Lisle was none of these, but an accomplished officer, an enthusiast for liberty it is true, but no less a champion of justice, and an upholder of constitutional monarchy. He was at Strasbourg early in 1792. One day Dietrich, the mayor of the town, who knew him well, asked him to write a martial song to be sung on the departure of six hundred volunteers who would soon set out to join the army of the Rhine. De Lisle consented, wrote the song that night-the words some times coming to him before the music, sometimes the

music before the words-and gave it to Dietrich the next morning. As is not uncommon with authors, he was at first dissatisfied with the fruit of his sudden inspiration, and as he handed the manuscript to the mayor, he said, "Here is what you asked for; but I fear it is not very good." But Dietrich looked, and knew better. They went to the harpsichord with Madame and sang it; they gathered the band of the theatre together and rehearsed it; it was sung in the public square, and excited such enthusiasm that, instead of six hundred volunteers, nine hundred left Strasbourg for the army. This song its author called merely "The War-Song of the Army of the Rhine" (Chant de guerre de l'armée du Rhin). But in the course of a few months it worked its way southwards, and became a favorite with the Marseillais, who carried it to Paris, where the people, knowing nothing of its name, its author, or its original purpose, spoke of it simply as "the Song of the Marseillais," and as the Marseillaise it will be known for ever, and for ever be the rallying cry of France against tyranny.

How widely do the histories of these two hymns differ, and how characteristic is their difference of the two people who have adopted them! The British hymn, like the British constitution, the product of no man and of no time; the origin of its several parts various and uncertain, or seen darkly through the obscurity of the past; its elements the product of different peoples; broached at first in secret, and when brought to light, frowned down as treasonable,

heretical, damnable; but at length openly avowed, and gradually growing into favor; modified, curtailed, added to in important points by various hands, yet remaining vitally untouched; at last accepted because it was no longer prudent to refuse to yield it place; and finally insisted upon as the timehonored palladium of British liberty. The Marseillaise, written to order, and in one night, to meet a sudden, imperative demand: struck out at the white heat of unconscious inspiration, perfect in all its parts, totus, teres, atque rotundus; and in six months adopted by the people, the army, and the legislature of the whole nation. The air of the one, simple, solid, vigorous, dignified, grand, the music of common sense and fixed determination; the words, though poor enough, mingling trust, and prayer, and self-confidence, and respect for whoever is above us, and a readiness to fight stoutly when God and the law are on our side: the other a war cry, a summons to instant battle, warning, appealing, denouncing, fiercely threatening the vengeance of the Furies; having no inspiration but glory, and invoking no god but liberty; beginning in deliberate enthusiasm, and ending in conscious frenzy.

How different the service too, to which the two songs have been put! The one used always to sustain, to build up, to perpetuate, to express loyalty and faithful endurance; a song of peace and plethoric festivity. The other, the signal of destruction, the warning note of revolution; the song that rises from the field where the red ploughshare turns up petri

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