every one else. Such genuine old ballads as remain in the popular
memory are either fast dying out, or relate exclusively to the
never-to-be-superseded topics of love, war, and wine. The people
of our day have little heart or appreciation for song, except in
Scotland and Ireland. England and America are too prosaic and too
busy, and the masses, notwithstanding all their supposed advantages
in education, are much too vulgar to delight in either song or
ballad that rises to the dignity of poetry. They appreciate the
buffooneries of the "Negro Minstrelsy," and the inanities and the
vapidities of sentimental love songs, but the elegance of such
writers as Thomas Moore, and the force of such vigorous thinkers
and tender lyrists as Robert Burns, are above their sphere, and are
left to scholars in their closets and ladies in their drawing-
rooms. The case was different among our ancestors in the memorable
period of the struggle for liberty that commenced in the reign of
Charles I. The Puritans had the pulpit on their side, and found it
a powerful instrument. The Cavaliers had the song writers on
theirs, and found them equally effective. And the song and ballad
writers of that day were not always illiterate versifiers. Some of
them were the choicest wits and most accomplished gentlemen of the
nation. As they could not reach the ears of their countrymen by
the printed book, the pamphlet, or the newspaper, nor mount the
pulpit and dispute with Puritanism on its own ground and in its own
precincts, they found the song, the ballad, and the epigram more
available among a musical and song-loving people such as the
English then were, and trusted to these to keep up the spirit of
loyalty in the evil days of the royal cause, to teach courage in
adversity, and cheerfulness in all circumstances, and to ridicule
the hypocrites whom they could not shame, and the tyrants whom they
could not overthrow. Though many thousands of these have been