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propositions already exist in England, they only await fertilization and development.

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Music is already officially acknowledged in our schools; let it be well taught under Government. The Royal Academy of Music is already on the right track, and is assisted with official funds; let it be expanded into a great central organization—for instance, either let it absorb the South Kensington scheme, or let it be itself absorbed into the Albert Hall. The Society of Musicians already provides pensions and pecuniary aid to many deserving musicians all over the land, with an honourable maintenance; let them be encouraged to establish a claim upon it by the payment of a small annual fee. And, lastly, let the general public, as well as the Government, awake to the importance, musically and philanthropically, of such a pension fund as we suggest, and contribute accordingly. We have no fear for the prospects of music in England. Our professors and amateurs have borne down much opposition, and have already obtained from an unmusical Government several unwilling concessions. Let them persevere, and if they are asked by Mr. Lowe himself, in the words of Mr. Darwin, Pray, what do you consider may be the direct uses of music to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life?' let them answer in some such words as these, 'There is no class of society which music is not calculated to recreate and improve. The lowest are brought most easily under its dominion, and the highest cannot escape its influence. Thousands of poor children who are being daily gathered into our schools acknowledge practically the helpfulness of music. We may convince ourselves of this by entering any national schoolroom on some hot summer's day. Who can estimate the fatigue and listlessness that come over the spirits of children wholly unused to mental application? Soon the teacher's voice rings in their ears without conveying any definite meaning -the mind, "like a jarred pendulum, retains only its motion, not its power;" the master exhausts himself in vain, and the already overworked mistress grows disheartened to see that no authority she can exercise will revive the worn-out attention of the pupil. But, the music lesson-or perhaps only one song is thrown in-the little faces brighten up, the listless hands are raised to beat time, the eager eyes are turned towards one of Mr. Hullah's big boards with big music and words, and, in a moment, the room resounds with music from a hundred fresh voices; and the wearied teacher forgets with a smile the tedium and the toil, whilst the children, by music, are drawn more closely to the teacher and the task; as if by magic the emotional atmosphere of the room is changed, and the spelling or arithmetic

is attacked with as much vigour as if the little students had only just come in from the green fields or pleasant playground. Has music been of no direct use to these children?'

Again, is it nothing that the innocent pleasures of our poor should be indefinitely increased? These school children throughout the land carry home their songs; they sing them to the labourer when he comes back at nightfall, the mother sings them to her fractious babe, the eldest daughter sings them as she goes about her household drudgery or farmwork, the very animals prick up their ears, and it is notorious that horses are cheered by the sound of their tinkling bells, and encouraged by the cheery songs of the ploughman. Many animals have good ears for time, and can be got to labour better with some musical accompaniment than without it. Let our poor have musical homes, and they will be less likely to go to the public-house for society, as well as for the music they find there. Let us train our poor children to music, and we shall have got one transforming element into the poor homes of the future.

But let us enter the workrooms of our great cities. Ought we not to be glad that through the long hours thousands of poor girls in crowded factories should be taught to sing together in parts over their work, and thus refresh themselves with an emotional life beyond the reach of the grinding machinery around them and the fumes of overheated workrooms? The fingers will speed none the less swiftly, but the young frames will not suffer so much, because the work will become more mechanical, less mental, and the mind refreshed by sweet sounds will be less apt to brood over morbid and unhealthy themes.

Like a good physician, like a tender friend, music comes to the aid of all classes, a gentle minister of consolation-sweeping clear the sky and showing the blue beyond, making grief bearable and loss tolerable. Music soothes the fever heat of the sick man, and ministers strangely to the disordered mind when other remedies fail; it enables the soldier to accomplish forced marches and fight battles at the end of them, it draws the bands of social and family life more closely together, it recreates the wearied professional man, it kindles new fervour in the sluggish soul, and is, moreover, ready to bear on high the inarticulate aspirations of many a toiling and careworn spirit.

These, and a thousand others, are amongst the benefits which Music is able to confer upon her votaries. Is it strange that those who are impressed with her power, and are aware of her infinite resources, should labour for the extension of musical education, and try, meanwhile, to provide some real answer to the objection

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which has of late found more ways than one of uttering itself,— Neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life'?

ART. VI.-1. Village-Communities in the East and West. Six Lectures, delivered at Oxford, by Henry Sumner Maine, Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence in the University, &c. London, 1871.

2. On the Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, and Inclosures of the Sixteenth Century in England. Translated from the German of E. Nasse, by Colonel H. A. Ouvry. Published under the sanction of the Cobden Club. London, 1871.

3. Les Ouvriers Européens. Etudes sur les Travaux, la Vie Domestique et la Condition Morale des Populations Ouvrières de l'Europe, &c. Par M. F. Le Play. Paris, 1855.

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VILLAGE-COMMUNITY may be roughly defined as a group of families, settled on a tract of land which maintains them, and which they hold on the principle of common ownership, more or less fully in practical operation. Recent researches have shown that society, becoming consolidated in the agricultural stage, began in very early ages to organize itself into such village-communities. To investigate the history of this now unfamiliar social institution is no profitless antiquarian task, but a problem of practical importance. The beginnings of the inquiry lie, indeed, in dark places of ancient history, but its ends reach into the midst of our modern life. The peasantry of ancient England habitually lived in village-communities, and our land laws cannot be rightly understood without the consideration that this early state of society underlay what is called the feudal system. Our dominion of India is still, in no small measure, organized in villagecommunities, so that a knowledge of their constitution is essential to a sound judgment in Indian affairs. Moreover, the history of these ancient agricultural associations bears stringently on certain modern projects of a communistic possession and cultivation of land-schemes confidently advocated as a cure for the evils of our present social system. From this point of view it is a matter of no slight or distant interest to observe that a large fraction of mankind has been engaged for many centuries in experimenting, in the strictest practical way, on the social and

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economic results of a more or less communistic land-tenure. It is not to be thought, however, that because the theory of villagecommunities is important to professional lawyers and statesmen, it must be obscure or dull to laymen. It is high time that Sir Henry Maine's reproach against his countrymen, as exceptionally wanting in knowledge of and popular interest in law, should be done away with. He himself, in his lectures on 'Ancient Law,' published ten years since, has done much-more than he thinks, perhaps to remove it. Neither he, nor any other writer equal to the task of tracing the development and expounding the philosophy of law in the plain language of the historian, is likely to complain henceforth that readers are either few or careless. Sir Henry Maine's present course of lectures on VillageCommunities' has, indeed, little of the conventional technical character of a law-book. Printed much as they were delivered, his discourses are lightened by frequent digressions, always instructive and sometimes most brilliant. Far from overloading his arguments with heavy details, he even goes too far in suppressing them; so that it may be fairly suggested that in future editions a larger appendix should give positive particulars of village organizations in such typical districts as Russia and India-details which actual students require to have before them, but which are as yet by no means easy of access. Still, as to the general theory of the subject, the treatise, as it stands, is perfect in its scope. Bringing compactly together the results of researches by Maurer, Nasse, and others, the author connects them with his own work into a whole. He offers a rational explanation of the origin of the village-community, a history of the process of feudalization' which has so generally modified. it, and a sufficient statement of the causes which have everywhere tended to supersede it by social arrangements more suited to advanced civilization.

In speaking of an explanation offered by Sir Henry Maine for the origin of the barbaric village-community, it is not meant that he advocates the views of the influential modern school of ethnologists, who seek the origin of society in an utterly low primitive condition of man, whence a course of simply natural development, acting through a vast period of time, is supposed to have raised him to higher social levels. Our author's startingpoint, in defining the primitive family tie, differs extremely from that taken by Mr. J. F. M'Lennan, in his Primitive Marriage,' and accepted in a modified form by Sir John Lubbock, in his 'Origin of Civilization.' Readers of Sir Henry Maine's 'Ancient Law' are aware that he receives the patriarchal theory' of the primeval state of man in society. In his present Vol. 131.-No. 261.

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lectures he puts prominently forward, as the very basis of his argument, the patriarchal family-'a group of men and women, children and slaves, of animate and inanimate property, all connected together by common subjection to the paternal power of the chief of the household.' Far from accounting for the existence of this complex social group by evolution from a lower state, he declares that, if the patriarchal family is really to be accepted as a primary social fact, the explanation assuredly lies among the secrets and mysteries of our nature, not in any characteristics which are on its surface.' Not to enter on the discussion of doctrines of the primitive condition of societydoctrines which, whether right or wrong, are not to be disposed of by a passing touch of criticism-we will here only express surprise that Sir Henry Maine should be so little inclined to simplify his theory of early society as to include (or seem to include) slavery as one of its primitive institutions. Surely, starting with the existence of simple families, then war between them, and the capture of prisoners, furnish an obvious natural cause capable of converting the earlier and simpler clan of kinsfolk into the later and more complex group of freemen and slaves. Within the present special subject, however, diverse theories of the origin of society scarcely clash. If it be disputed how patriarchal families arose in the world, it is admitted on all hands that they have existed from the remotest historic ages, and exist still. Thus Sir Henry Maine sets a firm foot on ground common to all schools of ethnology, when, taking for granted the patriarchal family, he makes his next step by treating it as the unit of a larger natural group-the village-community.

The patriarchal family, on the death of its chief, tends to separate into a group of families, each under its head of the next generation. Let a patriarchal family, occupying a tract of land in pasture and tillage, thus in a few generations separate naturally into a group of households, but without dividing the common-land. Or, let several households emigrate together to occupy in common an outlying tract. The result, in either case, is a village-community, and the circumstances and needs of a simple agricultural life are so similar, that a fairly general definition may be given of its arrangement. It is not an unexampled custom even now, and it may have been frequently a transitional stage, for the arable land to be tilled jointly for the common profit. But it is usual to find the arable land more or less permanently apportioned out in plots among the households, while the ground left in forest and waste remains enjoyed in absolute commonty by the villagers. Such arrangements, though especially prevalent among nations of the Aryan race,

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